The Prince of Wales Hospital yesterday announced four incidents in the past two months in which doctors - in three cases, the same intern - failed to remove pieces of gauze after stitching new mothers' wounds from giving birth.
Two cases involving the unnamed intern were discovered after the women consulted their doctors about abnormal vaginal discharges after returning home in June from the Sha Tin public hospital.
The third case was discovered after the hospital contacted 26 other women on whom the intern had performed the same procedure.
The hospital separately discovered a fourth incident involving a woman who had given birth last month and had been stitched by a resident physician who had been on the job for a few years. The doctor was also not named.
Women giving birth often require stitches due to tearing of the birth canal and incisions made by doctors to prevent it. Nonetheless, the Hospital Authority said it had not received any report of gauzes being left behind in such procedures for two years.
Gauze left in the body can cause fever and infection. If it is not removed within a week, the patient runs the risk of a potentially fatal case of blood poisoning. The women in the Prince of Wales cases were found to be healing normally. They were treated with antibiotics and did not require additional hospital stays.
Hospital officials said they were 'very concerned' about the cases and had strengthened procedures to require doctors to count all pieces of gauze used with a nurse after completing a procedure. Previous guidelines only required doctors to count the pieces of gauze themselves.