Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter  

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­ly of a 55-year-old woman, who al­leged­ly died from post-surgery com­pli­ca­tions fol­low­ing an op­er­a­tion at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, has filed a med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit against the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of the le­gal doc­u­ment, which was filed in Oc­to­ber 2024 and served to the SWRHA in mid-De­cem­ber.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the SWRHA le­gal team is look­ing in­to the mat­ter. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, filed with the San Fer­nan­do High Court, Ann Agard died on Oc­to­ber 29, 2019. She was di­ag­nosed with ovar­i­an can­cer in 2008 and un­der­went chemother­a­py and surg­eries over the next decade.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, she had an iso­lat­ed pelvic mass, and it was rec­om­mend­ed that she un­der­go surgery in May 2018. She was re­ferred to Dr Vishal Ba­hall, who per­formed the surgery on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2018. She un­der­went a fur­ther eight surg­eries in 14 months.

On Sep­tem­ber 4, 2018, ac­cord­ing to the le­gal doc­u­ment, Dr Ba­hall per­formed the surgery.

Ac­cord­ing to the claimants, Agard’s ureters, vagi­na, and bow­el were in­jured as a re­sult of med­ical neg­li­gence.

“The de­fen­dant failed to pro­vide Ann Agard … with a suit­able, qual­i­fied, com­pe­tent, skilled, and ex­pe­ri­enced urol­o­gist to en­sure that both dis­tal ureters of Ann Agard were pro­tect­ed by en­sur­ing that stents were placed in­side of the said ureters. The de­fen­dant there­fore wrong­ly al­lowed the sur­gi­cal team to per­form the first op­er­a­tion with­out first en­sur­ing the stents were placed in­side of the said ureters so as to en­able the sur­gi­cal team as the op­er­at­ing doc­tors at the time to eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy the lo­ca­tion of the ureters and there­by pre­vent un­in­ten­tion­al dam­age,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

Un­able to uri­nate af­ter her first op­er­a­tion, Agard un­der­went a sec­ond op­er­a­tion a day lat­er.

“The sec­ond op­er­a­tion re­sult­ed in nephros­to­my tubes hav­ing to be placed in­to Ann Agard, de­ceased, to al­low drainage of urine. Be­fore the first op­er­a­tion, the cre­a­ti­nine lev­el of Ann Agard, de­ceased, was with­in the nor­mal range, which is in­dica­tive of her kid­neys func­tion­ing nor­mal­ly. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the sec­ond op­er­a­tion, on the 6th Sep­tem­ber 2018, the pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry of the de­fen­dant pro­vid­ed its re­sults, which show Ann Agard’s cre­a­ti­nine lev­el at 2.0. The claimant avers that this lev­el is out of the nor­mal range and is in­dica­tive of poor kid­ney func­tion,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is al­leged that Agard con­tin­ued to leak from her vagi­na. On Sep­tem­ber 19, 2018, Agard un­der­went a third surgery to re­pair both ureters, al­leged­ly ‘neg­li­gent­ly dam­aged as a re­sult of the first op­er­a­tion’. It is claimed that af­ter the third surgery, the pa­tient con­tin­ued to leak from her vagi­na.

On Sep­tem­ber 21, 2018, there was a fourth surgery to cor­rect the po­si­tion of the ureters (the tubes that car­ry urine from the kid­neys to the blad­der). Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, Agard ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere vagi­nal pain, bleed­ing, and fa­tigue, ur­gent­ly re­quir­ing blood.

On Jan­u­ary 8, 2019, Agard had stents and one of her tubes re­moved dur­ing an­oth­er surgery. She was then al­lowed to go home. Two days lat­er, she was di­ag­nosed with re­cur­rent ovar­i­an can­cer and re­ferred for chemother­a­py.

“The claimant fur­ther avers that as a re­sult of the neg­li­gence of the de­fen­dant by it­self and/or its ser­vant and/or agents dur­ing the first op­er­a­tion, ovar­i­an can­cer re­curred be­cause it was not prop­er­ly treat­ed or re­moved,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

On May 27, 2019, the 55-year-old woman re­turned to the hos­pi­tal again af­ter stool be­gan ex­it­ing her vagi­na.

She, ac­cord­ing to her hus­band’s le­gal claim, suf­fered im­mense­ly un­til dy­ing at the hos­pi­tal in Oc­to­ber of that year. The fam­i­ly is seek­ing the sum of $25,000 in dam­ages or any sum the court deems just for loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life for Agard, $50,000 for fu­ner­al and wake ex­pens­es, as well as $49,000 for gra­tu­itous care.

Dr Ba­hall is a con­sul­tant gy­nae­co­log­i­cal on­col­o­gist as well as the head of the De­part­ment of Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Un­der agree­ments be­tween the SWRHA and its doc­tors, le­gal claims by pa­tients are di­rect­ed to­wards the au­thor­i­ty and not the doc­tor.

Doc­tor de­nies wrong­do­ing

Dr Ba­hall de­nies any wrong­do­ing in any surg­eries per­formed dur­ing his ca­reer. He told Guardian Me­dia last De­cem­ber that there is an at­tempt to tar­nish his name. “None of it is true, and ob­vi­ous­ly, if any­thing like that is pub­lished, they will have to face a law­suit be­cause this is, again, all not true; cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly ... Ob­stet­ric and gy­nae­co­log­i­cal surg­eries are very high risk. It’s as high risk as they come in terms of com­pli­cat­ed surg­eries. My com­pli­ca­tion rate is low­er than in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, and that’s what they au­dit­ed. I au­dit my own work, and the RHA au­dits every­body.

“Yes, there are pa­tients who would nev­er be hap­py be­cause some­thing went wrong, but 99 per cent of the time, it has noth­ing to do with that one thing but has more to do with a sys­temic fail­ure, or ba­si­cal­ly, a pa­tient hav­ing high-risk surgery, or the pa­tient was more ad­vanced than things thought. There are many dif­fer­ent vari­ables, but the bot­tom line is there was noth­ing done wrong at all …There was nev­er a com­plaint at the hos­pi­tal for them to say they had to in­ves­ti­gate some­thing or some­thing went wrong; not one,” Dr Ba­hall told Guardian Me­dia.