Dead patient’s family accuses PIC of negligence

By Waqar Gillani

LAHORE: Mussawar Hussain, 25, died at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) on March 28. His family claims that he died because of doctors’ negligence and delays in surgery, but PIC denies the allegations saying the patient suffered complicated diseases and could not be operated upon.

According to his family, they wrote to the Punjab governor, chief minister, health minister and the PIC chief executive officer a month ago, asking for an investigation into his death, but no one responded.

Hussain was admitted to the hospital on February 22 for an Aortic Root Replacement Surgery. He was treated for 34 days before he died on March 28. The family accuses doctors and the PIC surgical department of negligence. “He could have been saved if doctors had performed the surgery in time,” a senior family senior member told Daily Times.

After physicians diagnosed the patient and recommended surgery, they referred the case to the surgical department on February 25. According to the family, the surgery department did not act on the physicians’ recommendations despite repeated calls. Later, a surgeon, Dr Nasim, told them that the patient would be operated on March 17.

However, on the same day the department decided to postpone the operation because of a three-day heart conference starting on March 28. In the meantime, the patient’s health deteriorated. The family says that Hussain was given antibiotics.

The family claims that it asked surgeons to perform the operation on many occasions, but they neither performed the surgery nor changed the medicine. They say that Hussain had complained of pain in his kidneys. They said that doctors had inspected the patient’s Renal Function Test reports, which indicated that the antibiotics had deteriorated the functioning of his kidneys. The tests were carried out on March 11.

On March 17, Hussain refused to take his medicines. The family says that instead of reviewing the patient’s reports and state of health, doctors told them that they would discharge him if he did not take his medication.

Later, doctors stopped the antibiotics and asked his family to consult a Nephrologist. The family approached Dr Aizazmand Ahmed at Shaikh Zayed Hospital, who examined the patient on March 21. He told the family that excessive dosages of antibiotics had damaged his kidneys. He said that the PIC should have stopped giving antibiotics to the patient a week earlier.

The family complained that a patient with an infected liver and kidneys should not have been given tranquillisers, but doctors injected Hussain with morphine twice, which eventually caused his death on March 28.

The family claims it wrote to the PIC chief executive officer to find out why the surgery was not performed on time, why the patient was prescribed antibiotics in excess and why didn’t doctors take into account the results of the Renal Function Tests reports.

Prof Dr Jawad Sajid Khan, PIC chief executive officer, told Daily Times that the complaint was baseless. He said that the patient was incurable, as he was suffering from complicated diseases and couldn’t be operated upon. He said that Hussain’s kidneys had already failed and hospital staff had informed his family about this. He said that the family was well aware of the complications of operating on the patient.

He said that there were no delays in scheduled operations during the three-day heart conference and he had operated on a patient during that time.

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