In January 2024, the United States government announced that it has agreed to settle a medical malpractice claim involving an alleged botched gastric bypass surgery that a 31-year-old patient underwent in November 2020 at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The surgeons who performed the laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure allegedly reattached the patient’s small intestine backwards, leading to a hernia that required emergency surgery three days later. During the emergency surgery, the surgeons allegedly injured the patient’s lungs that led to blood clots. The medical device necessary to remove the clots at Tripler was allegedly broken at the time it was needed. Instead of transferring the patient to another hospital that was willing to accept her as a patient and where the necessary medical device was available, her physicians at Tripler administered the clot-busting medication tPA, which caused micro-hemorrhages in her brain.
The patient fell into a coma that led to her being dependant on a ventilator when she awoke from her coma. She was rendered a quadriplegic suffering from “locked in syndrome,” which meant that she was fully aware of what was happening around her but she was unable to speak, eat, breathe, or move on her own.
The patient, who had given birth earlier in 2020, died from sepsis on December 16, 2020, which was about one and a half months after her gastric bypass surgery.
One of the family’s medical malpractice lawyers stated after the settlement was announced, “She could only blink and cry and depend on machines for her life’s functions. Because of Tripler’s negligence, Donald has lost his wife, three small children have lost their mother and Beth has lost a daughter. This is a terrible tragedy that never, ever should have happened.”
The patient’s husband stated: “I pray that those located on-island that are looking at going into some program at Tripler thinks twice about it, or they see this and we can let them know that there is a track record of people being taken from their families. The hardest thing that I’ve ever had to see was (Julie) losing every bit of control that she had and having her rely on the trust that she’d placed in a doctor and to have that trust betrayed.”
In 2015, Tripler was the subject of a similar federal medical malpractice claim that alleged that a 32-year-old patient who underwent bariatric surgery at Tripler did not qualify for the procedure but was advised by Tripler’s bariatric surgery program that the procedure would help her lose and keep off her weight. Her surgery allegedly resulted in “leaks, infections, internal bleeding, strictures, multiple repair surgeries, endoscopies, widespread scar tissue, a life of gut pain and unrelenting vomiting.”
If you or a loved one have been injured (or worse) as a result of medical negligence involving gastric bypass surgery in the United States, you should promptly find a medical malpractice lawyer in your state who may investigate your gastric bypass malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a bariatric malpractice case, if appropriate.
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