Woman finds scissors left in after surgery

A grandmother was stunned when an X-ray revealed she had a set of surgical scissors lodged between her pelvis and spine.

The slightly opened, 17-centimeter tool was inadvertently left behind when Pat Skinner, 69, had surgery to remove part of her bowel in May 2001, reported the Herald Sun of Melbourne, Australia.

Pat Skinner's X-ray revealed scissors (Photo: Melbourne Herald Sun).

Upon the startling discovery, Skinner, of Sydney, was rushed to the hospital that performed the original surgery for an urgent operation.

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"I could have died at any time," she told the Herald Sun yesterday.

"It's terrifying. My daughter said, 'If you had fallen over it could have been the end of you.'"

Skinner, who is launching legal action, suffered sharp, "unbearable" pain after her 2001 surgery, but doctors told her recovering from a major operation takes a long time.

"If we went over a bump in the car it was just excruciating," she told the Melbourne paper. "The pains moved around my abdomen and my back and finally concentrated in my tail bone."

After struggling to find a doctor who would take her seriously, a family physician eventually agreed in October 2002 to order an X-ray, which identified the cause of her torment, the Herald Sun reported.

"The radiologist was stunned, and so was the ambulance crew later," she told the paper. "I lost even more of my bowel when they removed them," she said.

The original surgery was conducted by a trainee, according to the paper, because the experienced surgeon was called away for emergency surgery.

The hospital, St. George in Sydney, issued a statement yesterday admitting a breach of duty of care.