Naples - Five months with 14-centimeter-long surgical forceps forgotten in her belly. This is the incredible ordeal that befell Giusy Abruzzo, 42, from Modena, who underwent an abdominoplasty at a hospital in Naples on June 30th.
The persistent pain near her navel in the months following the surgery, initially underestimated by the surgeon, who attributed the cause to a small hernia, turned out to be much more serious. An emergency CT scan performed on November 27th at the Pavullo hospital finally revealed the shocking truth: the surgical forceps were still there, forgotten under the skin during the operation.
Only last Friday, at the hospital in Sassuolo, Abruzzo was able to undergo the removal procedure, thus eliminating the risk of even more serious complications. "I don't want other people to go through what I went through," she says, determined to file legal proceedings against the surgeon responsible.
The choice to undergo surgery in Naples was no coincidence: Abruzzo had already undergone a complex surgical procedure to reduce obesity (stomach reduction surgery in Bergamo, followed by the loss of 50 kilos) and was trying to avoid the long waiting lists in Lombardy, where abdominoplasty procedures take up to 4-5 years.
This case refocuses attention on safety in operating rooms and medical liability, especially when patients turn to facilities outside the region in the hope of shortening wait times.
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