Genaro Nava rated his pain as a nine out of 10. His blood pressure was high. He was throwing up.
The Rowlett resident was several days out from a major surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, and he wasn’t recovering as well as expected. His doctor ordered an X-ray, and it showed why Nava was so sick.
According to Nava and his attorney, the surgical team had left a nearly 10-inch long surgical instrument inside his body.
The 58-year-old is now suing Baylor University Medical Center and three surgeons for the error. It’s a mistake that he and his attorney say caused significant physical pain and mental anguish, at a time when Nava was already dealing with an existing medical issue.
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Spokespeople for Baylor Scott & White Health, which includes Baylor University Medical Center, did not provide comment by the time of publication. Dr. Catherine Hambleton Davis, who is identified in the lawsuit as the lead surgeon on the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dallas-based attorney Les Weisbrod said he and the Nava family attempted to settle the case with the hospital before filing a lawsuit. According to Weisbrod, the hospital refused.
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Weisbrod filed the lawsuit in Dallas County district court on Tuesday afternoon, according to a filing receipt shared with The Dallas Morning News. As of early Wednesday afternoon, the case had not yet appeared in the county’s online court portal.
Nava went into Baylor University Medical Center at the beginning of August 2024. He had cancer and was scheduled to undergo robotic surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor.
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When the surgery began, according to the legal filing, it was more complicated than expected. The surgical team ended up doing an open surgery instead of robotic, the filing says, and the procedure lasted more than two hours longer than planned.
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At the end of the procedure, the lawsuit says, two nurses recorded in the surgery notes that they had counted and confirmed the number of surgical instruments.
In the days after the procedure, Nava remained in the hospital to recover. But he was in a tremendous amount of pain, he said. Three days after the surgery, a doctor on the surgical team ordered an abdominal X-ray.
The X-ray showed a metal object, approximately 9.5 inches long and 2.5 inches wide, inside Nava’s body. It was a surgical retractor, a tool used to hold an incision open during surgery.
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Four days after the surgery to remove the tumor, Nava had a second operation. This time, it was to remove the surgical retractor that had been sealed into his abdomen.
At a Wednesday news briefing, Nava said none of the doctors on the surgical team apologized to him after the error was discovered. He felt the doctors acted like the mistake wasn’t a big deal.
“I didn’t feel that they were treating me as a human being,” Nava said through an interpreter. “They treated me like, ‘Oh it’s nothing.'”
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A full year after the back-to-back surgeries, Nava said he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and stays awake for hours. He’s depressed, he said, and worried.
Nava is now cancer-free, but he could need more treatment in the future. And that scares him.
“I am afraid to go in for another surgery,” Nava said through an interpreter. “and for me to not come out of it, because someone professionally didn’t do their job.”
Read more on The Dallas Morning News
