Hi there, long story short: went to a doctor almost 8 weeks ago to get a “small and easy operation”.
There were any sort of images or specific examinations before the procedure, apart from the basic blood test and X-Ray before going into the operating room.
Apparently, got an infection out of nowhere. Had to spend 12 days hospitalized. Used a VAC wound therapy machine for three weeks to help improve healing, and now I have a somehow large wound that is still open and there is a long way ahead until fully recovery, and they keep saying that basically it is what it is, just have to wait.
Am I just frustrated, or something did go wrong? It was a pilonidal cyst.
I think you’d have a really hard time demonstrating medical negligence - post-operative infection is a recognized risk of any type of surgery and not something you can really attribute to the hospital/doctor in the absence of further information suggesting that they did something wrong.
I believe in a scale of competence, and it’s possible your doctor was more to the lower end as compared to my experience. I had the same issue, pilonidal cyst, and was treated within 10 minutes of being diagnosed. That appointment with a dermatologist, which was made the same day, was certainly a lot different from the treatment I received from a GP over the course of a few days, which was totally ineffective (scraping at the wound, and applying some ointment).
I was prescribed a large bag of pills including antibiotics after the surgery, and before the surgery a local anesthetic. In fact, the doctor was very careful in the cyst removal, and guided me through the whole process step by step to let me know what was going on. In fact the suturing was done by a plastic surgeon. The dermatologist had called him in to assist. There was some form of cream that I needed to apply to the incision area, and certainly a follow-up consultation or two. In my case, knock on wood, so far I haven’t had a recurrence and it’s been over 15 years.
As far as a legal case, I’m not really an expert, but I believe it would be hard to prove that the infection originated from the hospital, as opposed to potential contamination later at home.