According to an Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit filed in January 2025 against Northwestern McHenry Hospital, a surgeon, and others, the 71-year-old plaintiff had surgery to remove a mass in his neck and to dissect a lymph node on the left side of his neck, on January 31, 2023. In the weeks that followed, he experienced swelling, pain, discharge and other signs and symptoms, according to his Illinois medical malpractice complaint.
The plaintiff had a second surgery on his neck four months later, on May 21, 2023, during which a surgical sponge left behind after the first surgery was discovered, and removed. There was no explanation why or how the surgical sponge remained in the man’s body after the first surgery.
The plaintiff’s Illinois medical malpractice attorney filed a report with the court from the plaintiff’s medical expert stating that there was only one follow-up visit after the surgery, on February 8, 2023, and referencing medical records from March 1, 2023 that reported “green-tinted drainage from the incision site.” The expert reportedly wrote in his report: “It is difficult to understand why this patient’s retained surgical sponge went unrecognized and untreated for as long as it did. It is more likely than not that if Dr. Sandhu had performed adequate follow-up for this patient the sponge would have been identified and removed sooner.”
The plaintiff’s complaint alleges that there was a breach in the standard of care by the defendants in failing to perform a correct sponge count during the first surgery and by leaving the surgical sponge in the plaintiff’s body when the surgical incision was closed. The complaint alleges that the plaintiff “sustained serious and permanent injury, experienced and will in the future experience significant pain and suffering, disability and loss of a normal life, incurred and will in the future incur medical expenses and experienced delay in his medical care.””
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the retention of surgical sponges inside patients’ bodies is medical malpractice that can cause serious complications such as malignant gossypiboma (a granuloma forms around a foreign object such as sponges or gauze). Incidents involving retained surgical items (RSIs) occur one in every 10,000 surgeries, 69% of which involve surgical sponges. Perioperative nurses are usually required to count sponges manually during the surgery. To comply with WHO guidelines, double-checking should also be performed routinely. However, the manual method alone is somewhat ineffective in significantly reducing the risk of surgical sponge retention.
If you or a loved one may have been injured (or worse) as a result of surgical malpractice in Illinois or in another U.S. state, you should promptly find an Illinois medical malpractice lawyer, or a medical malpractice lawyer in your state, who may investigate your surgical medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a surgical medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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