One-Year-Old Baby Left Blind After Wrong Eye Is Removed During Surgery

The parents of one-year old Fernando Jonathan Valdez Ayala will be making a complaint to the National Commission of Human Rights and the Medical Arbitration Commission after their baby was left blind after the wrong eye was removed during surgery.

The Daily Mail reports:

A surgeon has been suspended and placed under investigation for leaving a baby blind after he removed the wrong eye during surgery.

Their son was having chemotherapy to treat a tumour in his left eye, but when Armando Cisneros Espinoza decided the treatment was not working he chose to operate to take the eye out – but instead removed the child’s fully functional right eye.

The mix-up happened at the Medical Unit of High Specialty Mexican Social Security Institute in Ciudad Obregon, in the northwest Mexican state of Sonora.

Fernando’s distressed mother Maria Marlene Ayala Quijano said: ‘Doctors started to treat him and decided that they were going to remove the left eye when it was not working, but they removed the right one.

‘The doctor told us that he had removed the right eye because he had seen a tumour in that eye as well.

‘But we cannot believe a tumour is going to suddenly appear in just a few hours in our son’s good eye, and the left eye, that was supposed to be removed, is still there.

‘The doctor said that he wanted to save his life and therefore he decided to remove the right eye.

‘They say that they will look at the eye to check that there was a tumour there, but we plan to get an independent test.

‘I feel impotence and anger because my baby does not have a working eye anymore, and nobody can put it back, it was his only healthy eye.’

The child still has a tumour in his bad eye and his life continues to be in danger.

The boy’s father, Fernando Valdez Gastelum, has reported the incident to police and an internal investigation has been launched at the hospital.

The Mexican Social Security Institute said they had also started an investigation and director general Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya ordered a special team to go to Sonora to investigate. 

The team is led by the coordinator of High Specialty Medical Units, Jaime Zaldivar Cervera, an ophthalmologist paediatrician and staff from the Office of Patient Rights.