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Woman undergoing surgery dies during blackout
Death due to kidney failure and gallstones – Pathologist
By Leon Suseran
A Whim, Corentyne family says that it was frantically searching for porters to power- up the New Amsterdam Hospital’s generator after a blackout hit the facility during a crucial life-and-death surgery of their relative.
The family members claimed that the doctors rushed out of surgery looking for torchlights, rushed back in with a cell phone with torchlight; and the porter was never found. Power was restored an hour later. In the end, Tirtawattie Shoandeo, 47, was pronounced dead.
The woman’s son, Yuvraj Shoandeo, of Lot 129 Whim, Corentyne, is furious. He stated that his mother had complained of stomach pains on the evening of January 19. They took her to two private doctors before they decided to admit her at the New Amsterdam Public Hospital.
“The doctor (at N/A Hospital) said that he gotta do some surgery to her belly but [he] didn’t state what was wrong with her”.
Later the next day, the woman’s husband, Satnarine Shoandeo, was informed by doctors that the woman needed to undergo surgery. The family had to sign a document accepting the outcome.
“So around 9:30pm, they took her in the operation theatre; the operation was taking place and around after 10pm there was a blackout,” stated the woman’s son.
Yuvraj said that he and his uncle were looking for the porter to put on the generator. “There was no porter; there was nobody to start the generator”.
He said that one Guyanese doctor, two Cuban doctors and three nurses were present in the operation room.
Dead: Tirtawattie Shoandeo
He added that soon as the power went off, one of the doctors came out during the operation “and searched for torchlights, and when we asked what happened, he tell we that he was busy”. “He did find a light and he go in back and – it’s a light like on a phone—and he come out back again and went and get a bigger torchlight”. No relative knew what transpired in the operating room during the power outage.
The power was restored one hour later, prompting the doctors to return outside and inform the relatives that the woman was now in a critical condition which merited her being transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
“Before that, he came out and told me that whilst doing the operation my mother heart failed her and she ‘catch back herself’, but my common sense tells me [that], if your heart fails you, you die—it cannot come back, but there was black out [for] one hour”. The ambulance was brought in and preparations were made for the transfer.
However, it was around 02:00 pm that the family was further informed that the woman had passed away. “To me, it was the blackout that caused this, because if you are doing an operation, you cannot get standby, something gotta be wrong—they cannot see what they are doing in there! They don’t have standby!
A post- mortem conducted by Dr Vivekanand Brijmohan concluded that the woman died of kidney failure and gallstones, but the family believes that the doctors made errors during surgery. “Without a light, —if you are doing a surgery in a theatre, you supposed to get a standby immediately—that is people life you playing with!” the son said.
The woman’s brother, Ramesh, related how he was frantically searching for the porter to get the generator started. “We were looking for them and we were waiting for them but by then the current came on”, he stated.
The woman’s brother added that one of the doctors came out with a torchlight, “searching in his van—I ain’t know what he searching in he van for”.
The family is contemplating legal action against all of the doctors involved in the surgery and the hospital’s administration.
Several attempts to contact the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the N/A Public Hospital Mr Alan Johnson as well as Medical Superintendent of the facility, Dr Artie Sharma proved futile.
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