12 of the most shocking medical blunders we’ve ever seen

Trapped and terrified

Rom Houben suffered a near-fatal car crash that left him in a vegetative state – or so his doctors thought.

For 23 years, Rom was stuck in hospital, listening as nurses did their daily rounds and his family visited. He couldn’t move or speak to tell them he was conscious. All he could do was lie in bed, hoping someone would realise his brain was functioning.

It wasn’t until a neurologist studying coma patients used a special scanning system on Rom that doctors realised he wasn’t in a coma at all.

Now, using a special touchscreen computer and wheelchair, Rom can communicate with his loved ones in his hometown of Belgium. After three years of physiotherapy, he can even move a little.

Rom was trapped inside his body for 23 years, but now feels reborn.

Clamping up

When Norbert Pohl, 61, woke from a simple operation to clear a blocked intestine, he suffered terrible pain.

Shockingly, an X-ray revealed a pair of 15-inch surgical clamps stuck in his abdomen.

After five surgeries and the collapse of his abdominal wall, the clamps were finally removed.

Norbert, from Duisburg in Germany, now has to wear a surgical corset to keep his insides in place.

Slippery Scalpel

During a routine appendix removal, Bonnie Judge, 35, from Utah, was warned she had a mass on her colon, causing inflammation and blockage.

Bonnie was booked in for another procedure, but her insides were so inflamed and squashed together, the surgeon accidentally cut her intestines.

He didn’t notice the mistake.

It wasn’t until Bonnie woke later and vomited black fluid that her doctor became worried.

She went under the knife again and it was discovered her intestine was leaking bile into

To fix this, surgeons had to create a fistula – a hole in Bonnie’s abdominal muscles.

Afterwards, Bonnie and her surgeon cried together.

They were both traumatised by the error, which left Bonnie with a permanent open wound that made her self-esteem plummet.

Foreign Object

After suffering excessive bleeding during childbirth, Guo Qiaohong, 33, faced countless complications.

She had chronic pain and thick liquid frequently seeped from her vagina.

Scans seemed to show that everything was slowly healing, but Guo’s pain continued.

Three months after giving birth, Guo was in the shower when she felt something strange.

Peeking at her privates, she tugged on a strange object. A black piece of gauze fell out of her.

The surgical sponge had been left inside her during childbirth.

The First People’s Hospital of Lianyungang in China, where Guo gave birth, promised to pay her in damages and move the nurse, who’d made the blunder, to a different department.

X-Ray Surprise

Meagan Bechtold was 27 years old when she came down with a niggling cough.

She went to the doctor three times within a few months.

At first, the doctors thought she had a cold.

Then, they thought it was allergies. Finally, Meagan was diagnosed with bronchitis – but when antibiotics failed to work, she was sent for an X-ray.

A 13cm mass was found in Meagan’s diaphragm – she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer.

Because of all the misdiagnoses, it had already progressed to stage two and she needed to start intense chemotherapy immediately, in her hometown of Texas.

Off On The Wrong Foot

A surgeon in Azerbaijan is facing jail time after accidentally amputating a healthy limb.

Tarlan Mamedova, 87, had gangrene in her left leg, which needed to be removed.

Her right leg was riddled with atherosclerosis, a build-up of plaque in the arteries, but with treatment her doctors hoped she’d recover.

Unfortunately, the surgeon removed Tarlan’s right leg instead, later claiming he’d made the mistake because the operating table was “the wrong way round”.

The elderly woman was left without any legs at all, as both were amputated at the top of her thighs.

Drama Queen

When Scottish mum Demi Bane’s four-year-old daughter, Karis Cochrane, suffered excruciating stomach pain, she took her to the doctor.

But the pair were dismissed time and again over six days, with docs insisting Karis was simply constipated and dehydrated.

Finally, with the child still in pain, they returned to hospital and Demi put her foot down. She refused to leave until doctors did further tests.

Shockingly, a blood test found Karis had an infection and an ultrasound revealed her appendix had burst.

Pus had seeped into her body, causing an abscess behind her uterus.

Docs admitted that if Karis hadn’t received emergency surgery, she would have died within 45 minutes.

Luckily, with urgent treatment Karis recovered.

Needle in a Haystack

Yu went to hospital to have her intra-uterine contraceptive removed.

It was a simple procedure and seemed to go well.

But 18 hours after the operation, Yu felt a sharp prick.

She looked down and saw a syringe sticking out of her vagina. It had been used to administer anaesthetics in the Eastern Chinese hospital.

Yu was furious, but the hospital refused to take full responsibility.

One surgeon, Dr Lang, simply said she remembered removing the syringe, although she admitted that couldn’t be proven.

Pounding headache

Bimla Nayyar, 81, was admitted to a Michigan hospital with a dislocated jaw.

Doctors took a CT scan but, unbeknown to her, they mixed up her results with another patient’s.

Bimla’s surgeon had read the wrong scans and thought her patient had suffered a skull fracture and bleeding in her brain. Bimla was rushed into surgery, where five holes were drilled into her skull.

Once docs realised her brain was perfectly healthy, they hurriedly stitched her back together.

But the damage of an unnecessary brain surgery on this elderly woman had already been done.

Bimla died six months after the surgery.

Lethal injection

Richard Smith, 79, was admitted to hospital after he experienced shortness of breath during a routine dialysis session.

He had an upset tummy as well and was prescribed an antacid which was supposed to help neutralise his stomach acid and ease the nausea.

Sadly, a nurse accidentally gave him pancuronium, a muscle relaxant and paralytic. In high doses, pancuronium is used during lethal injections.

Thirty minutes after the blunder, Richard was found unresponsive and was later declared brain dead.

His wife, who he’d been married to for 55 years in Miami, Florida, was inconsolable.

Guilty conscience

When British couple Joanne and Robin Harman welcomed their son, Ben, into the world they were overjoyed.

A paediatrician checked him over and gave them the green light to take their healthy baby home.

But what the doctor failed to notice was that Ben’s blood sugar levels were dangerously low.

Shortly after leaving the hospital, the newborn suffered seizures.

Joanne and Robin rushed him to emergency, and doctors administered glucose to save him.

However, although he’d survived, he’d already suffered serious brain damage.

To avoid being blamed for negligence, hospital staff covered up the injury, claiming that Ben had epilepsy and autism.

Joanne and Robin were wracked with guilt, believing they were to blame for Ben’s medical issues.

When he was 13, Ben was referred to a specialist at a different hospital, which revealed Ben had clearly suffered brain damage at birth.

Shocked, Joanne and Robin sought legal advice, and the National Health Service Trust surrendered medical notes that proved docs had failed to treat Ben’s low blood sugar.

The family received one of the biggest medical negligence payouts in history, believed to be around $35 million.

Baby swap

When a Soviet hospital mixed up the identities of two babies, no-one could have guessed the grave error would lead to murder.

But that’s exactly what happened when Zoya Tuganova’s fair-skinned baby was given to the wrong family.

For three decades, Zoya was certain the daughter she’d taken home, who she named Katya, wasn’t her own.

Finally, Katya decided to investigate the claims and found she’d been switched at birth by the hospital.

Story continues in next slide.

The two girls had been born by caesarean and the nurses got them mixed up.

Zoya’s biological daughter, Liliya (aka Lucia), had grown up in poverty.

When her father saw Liliya’s light skin, he accused his wife, Elvira, of cheating. He beat her up and then murdered a man he suspected of being her lover.

While he was in jail, Elvira turned to alcohol and her children were put in an orphanage.

Sadly, Elvira passed away by the time her biological daughter, Katya, found her.

Now, Zoya, Liliya and Katya are trying to make up for lost time.

(Pictured; Lucia, left, Katya, right)