Jalandhar, April 1
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has asked Vardaan Medical Centre, Jalandhar, to pay Rs 5 lakh to a Hoshiarpur-based family for the death of a woman allegedly due to negligence in performing a fibroid surgery.

Balwinder Singh, husband of the deceased Davinder Kaur, Swaran Singh, father, and Nirmal Kaur, mother, had lodged a complaint in this regard with the forum on July 10, 2008, against Vardaan Medical Centre, surgeon Dr Lakhwinder Singh, gynaecologist Dr Sonia Kamboj, owner Dr Vareesh Kumar and anaesthetist Dr Monika Goel.

Balwinder said he was married since 1997 but did not have a child. He said he had heard about the centre and approached it on December 6, 2007.

“We went back to our village and four days later contacted Dr. Rajnish Arora of Arora Diagnostic Clinic in Gurdäspur and got the ultrasound scan done which revealed that uterus is normal in size and echo texture and no abnormal mass is seen. We also approached Kamal Hospital, Jalandhar, on December 25, 27 and 29 where my wife was examined for any fibroid in the uterus. Doctors available there said that the egg in the uterus was of normal size and there is no fibroid in the uterus. I went to Vardaan centre on January, 19, 2008, and showed the report of Arora Diagnostic Centre and requested them to have a third opinion but we were told there is no need to have a third opinion.

They said they were told that if they want to save the life of Davinder and further wanted to have a child then they must give their consent for the surgery to remove the fibroid. The complainants were asked to deposit Rs 25,000 as charges of surgery, medicines and other expenses, which was accordingly immediately arranged and deposited in spite of the fact that the complainants were not mentally prepared for the surgery.

“My wife was taken to the operation theatre in an hasty manner at about 10am the same day. At about 2.30 pm, Dr Lakhwinder came out from the operation theatre and said the patient had to be taken to some other hospital as they are not having ventilator and proper equipment to overcome the situation.

Accordingly, they took the patient to the Shri Ram Cardiac Centre at Joshi Hospital of Dr BP Sharma where the patient had been declared brought dead. The postmortem of the body of Davinder was conducted at the civil hospital, Jalandhar. As per the postmortem report, the uterus surface was still not cut and, therefore, it was sent for histopathology examination report,” he said.

“As per the said report there were no fibroids in the uterus. Before surgery, I had made it clear that my wife is allergic to sulpha-drugs which was clearly noted down by Dr Sonia Kamboj,” Balwinder said.

He said his wife was MA (Political Science) and had also done BEd and PGDCA. She had applied for the post of teacher in the Elementary Schools as well as for Punjabi mistress in government schools through the state Education Department. After her death, her name appeared in the successful candidates to be appointed as elementary teacher as well as Punjabi mistress in a government school.

Dr Vareesh Kumar said he had never met the complainant and his wife and the scan was instead conducted by Dr Sonia. Dr Lakhwinder and Dr Sonia replied that a Trans Vaginal Scan was done with a high resolution which could detect lesions of 3mm while the scans done from outside were Trans Abdominal Scan with low resolution and cannot see lesions less than 2cm. The patient had a cardiac arrest. The anaesthetist replied that there was no deficiency on her part, which had been corroborated by the board of doctors who have stated that the cause of death was not due to overdose of any anaesthetic drug.

The forum on the basis of a cross examination and reports filed opined that all the doctors were negligent.

“Admittedly, no fibroid was detected on laparoscopic observation. So when on laparoscopy, no fibroid was seen, there was no need for hysteroscopy,” it said. Relying on similar judgments, the forum fixed the responsibility on the medical centre and its owner Dr Vareesh. Realising that the deceased was having a bright future, a consolidated compensation of Rs 5,00,000 and litigation expenses of Rs 10,000 was announced to be distributed equally among husband and both parents.