Thousands of NHS patients suffer ‘botched’ surgery even having the WRONG organs removed, shocking new figures show… including one woman who had a fallopian tube taken out rather than her appendix

Thousands of NHS patients have suffered from botched procedures that include the wrong organs being removed and medical equipment left inside during surgery.

An analysis of health service data found that between 2015 and 2023 some 3,684 life-threatening mistakes by doctors were recorded.

The most common and serious – known as ‘never events’ – involve more than 1,500 operations which were carried out on the wrong part of the body.

One woman had one of her fallopian tubes – part of the reproductive system – taken out instead of her appendix, while other patients had the wrong toe removed or an injection into the wrong eye.

Objects such as cotton wool balls, clamps, surgical gloves and needles have mistakenly been sewn up inside patients during operations, too, while others were given the wrong implant, the analysis by accident compensation firm claims.co.uk found.

Bungling medics have removed the wrong organs, operated on incorrect parts of the body or even left surgical supplies inside the patient

One patient having surgery on his skull was implanted with a cranial plate which had been custom-made for another patient, while others had the incorrect pacemaker or stent fitted.

Some were even given the incorrect organ or blood transfusion for their blood type.

A so-called never event is defined as a serious incident that was wholly preventable if the safety procedures that are in place had been followed correctly. Most of the affected patients will have needed further corrective surgery to address the mistakes and spent more time in hospital.

The Patients Association, a charity that campaigns for better health and social care, says these errors ’cause serious physical and psychological effects that can stay with a patient for the rest of their lives’.

Other mistakes include injecting patients with medication which should have been swallowed, overdosing with immunosuppressant drug methotrexate – often used to treat cancer – and misplacing feeding tubes into the lungs, which can cause potentially fatal blockages or infections.

Referring to the data earlier this month, the Royal College of Surgeons described the number of preventable mistakes in surgery as ‘unacceptable’ and added: ‘Learning from mistakes and using best practice and guidance to avoid such errors should be the priority of every medical and surgical team across the country.’