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| Lien said her husband's death makes the family upset. Photo Dantri |
Lien, 51, from District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, said her husband, Dinh Van Thuong, 49, suffered from back pain and strangury. In mid-July 2012, he went to the Binh Dan Hospital in HCM City for an examination.
The doctors said his right kidney had water and gave him some medicines. However, after taking the medicines, his pain got more and more intense. On July 21, he was brought back to the hospital.
According to Lien, her husband was admitted at the Department of Hepatobiliary and was there for one week. The doctors carried out many scans but they could not make any conclusions. They asked the patient to take magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at Hoa Hao Hospital. The MRI results showed that the man did not have dilated bile ducts nor gallstones, but the doctors still asked the family to sign agreement on a gallstone operation.
The surgery was carried out on July 31 but no stones were removed. The doctors did not explain anything to the family. On August 3, doctors informed Lien that her husband suffered from bile duct cancer and he would die in three months.
Immediately after receiving the message, on August 4, Lien lodged a complaint, asking the hospital to clarify her husband's illness.
"After the surgery, even though my husband's health got worse, doctors asked him to leave the hospital. Even when my husband was in critical condition, the Binh Dan hospital still refused to receive him. I brought my husband to many other hospitals in the city, but they said that he should be treated in the Binh Dan Hospital, where he was operated on before. Finally, I had to beg the Hospital 115 and accepted the doctors’ explanation that my husband would die here. On November 21, he passed away," Lien said.
According to Lien, after the death of her husband, she filed a complaint with the Department of Health and repeatedly requested a meeting with the department’s director to present the case but she was denied.
Lien said that the doctors did not diagnose the disease but still conducted the surgery resulted in her husband’s death.
"When they discovered the disease, they rushed to treat my husband in the other way, without giving notice to my family. If I knew that my husband suffered from cancer surgery, I would have not agreed with the operation," Lien added.
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| Photo Dantri |
At the meeting with the media about the incident, Mr. Nguyen Tan Binh, Director of the HCM City Department of Health, said the department had received a complaint from Lien. On November 9, the Department set up a professional council to review the case and concluded: "The patient suffered from liver metastatic cancer that was likely primary from biliary bile, with gallstones."
Accordingly, the Binh Dan Hospital did not commit surgical errors but the hospital did not give advice to the patient’s family when doctors discovered abnormal findings from the first diagnosis.
Lien expressed little sympathy with the conclusions of the Department of Health and said the family was considering sending a letter of complaint to the Ministry of Health.
"We are also considering legal intervention to force the hospital to pay adequate compensation for the pain and loss that my family is suffering," Lien said.
Compiled by Mai Lan
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