Rajeswari Ayyappan traveled halfway around the world from India to have a malignant brain tumor removed at a renowned cancer center.
Something went wrong.The neurosurgeon mistakenly operated on the healthy part of her brain after reviewing pictures of another person's skull, hospital officials said Thursday.
The 59-year-old mother of Indian film star Sridevi was in another hospital Friday, in stable condition after a second operation that removed part of the tumor.
No one at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the foul-up occurred, or at New York Hospital, where Ayyappan was transferred, would disclose the extent of the damage caused.
"We have acknowledged that a mistake was made, and we have extended a heartfelt apology to the patient's family," said Dr. Joseph Simone, Sloan-Kettering's physician-in-chief.
Ayyappan's daughter Sridevi and other family members were keeping a bedside vigil at New York Hospital, where she was brought four days after the May 26 operation.
The mistake marred Sloan-Kettering's near-perfect record. Only one complaint had been filed against Sloan-Kettering in the past two years, state Health Department spokesman Bill Fagel said.
"Our standards of patient care were not met in this case," Simone said.
First, the neurosurgeon brought another patient's diagnostic films into the operating room, then he opened Ayyappan's head and began searching her healthy right temporal lobe for the tumor, the hospital said. The temporal lobes control memory, emotion and some sensory functions.
Sloan-Kettering spokeswoman Christine Westerman said the hospital was investigating how long the surgery continued before the error was discovered.
The doctor's surgical privileges were suspended, and he was stripped of his administrative role at Sloan-Kettering, Westerman said.
Westerman refused to provide the doctor's name. However, New York Newsday said other doctors identified him as Dr. Ehud Arbit. Calls to Arbit's Manhattan office for comment were transferred to the public affairs office at Sloan-Kettering.
Sloan-Kettering has 45 days to conduct an investigation and submit a full written report; the Health Department will likely conduct its own inquiry, Fagel said.