A renowned doctor who was once featured on the Discovery Channel
botched a 13-year-old girl’s surgery so badly that she was left nearly
blind and permanently disabled, a new Manhattan lawsuit charges.
Bethany Flanders went to Dr. Ohebena Boachi-Adjei at New York- Presbyterian Hospital in 2007 to correct her scoliosis but left permanently unable to walk and "almost totally blind."
Bethany Flanders, now 20, says she went to Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei at the Hospital for Special Surgery in 2007, hoping he’d correct her scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that forced her into a wheelchair at times.
Instead, Boachie-Adjei performed a sloppy, rushed operation, leaving
her “almost totally blind” and now permanently unable to walk, says her
Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
“Bethany and her family put their absolute trust in the defendants here, and now a young woman has lost vision and is disabled forever,” their lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., told The Post on Monday.
The doctor’s and hospital’s alleged mistakes included a failure to assure that Flanders was an appropriate candidate for the surgery, since she had nutritional and cardiac issues, Johnson said.
The lawyer said his client’s vital signs also weren’t properly monitored during the operation.
After Flanders developed scoliosis from a polio vaccine at age 1, her parents say they searched the country to find a surgeon who could straighten her spine as she got older.
They settled on Boachie-Adjei, who specializes in pediatric orthopedics.
The Columbia University-trained doctor was described as “arguably the world’s top surgeon of spinal deformities’’ in a plot summary of a 2006 episode featuring Boachie-Adjei on the Discovery Channel’s documentary series “Surgery Saved My Life.”
He closed his New York practice in June and returned to his native Ghana.
The Hospital for Special Surgery is a division of New York- Presbyterian Health Care System.
Boachie-Adjei did not return messages seeking comment. His former employer, New York-Presbyterian, also did not return messages.
Flanders, from the tiny town of Dallas in central Pennsylvania, is suing the hospital for unspecified damages.
Since the surgery, she suffers from blind spots and can’t see smaller objects such as her own foot, her lawyer said.
And while she studies biology at Misericordia University, her mother must still be her constant companion, driving her to class, taking notes during lectures and helping her perform basic functions throughout the day, Johnson said.
Source: New York Post, 1st Dec 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment