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Doctor accused of wrongly removing patient’s spleen at Hong Kong hospital insists it was ‘not a blunder’
- Botched operation takes out the blood-filtering organ instead of a kidney tumour, says incident report
- Accused urologist says he acted to save the patient’s life at the Causeway Bay hospital
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A doctor accused of mistakenly removing a patient’s spleen has claimed he acted correctly to save the woman’s life.
The urologist, whose surname is Teoh, denied the operation was a medical blunder despite the Department of Health describing the organ as wrongly extracted.
He told the Post it was incorrectly listed as a mistake because the private hospital refused to modify an operation record after he noticed an urgent problem and performed the unplanned splenectomy.
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The incident, which happened at St Paul’s Hospital in Causeway Bay in late March, was revealed by the department on Wednesday. It said a 57-year-old woman had her spleen wrongly removed, in an operation which was originally performed to remove a kidney tumour.
I have been working as a doctor for years and it is impossible that I would not be able to differentiate between a spleen and a kidney
“This is not a blunder, as I know what I was doing,” said Teoh, who refused to disclose his full name.
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