A doctor killed a patient by performing surgery with a machine that could not properly be used alone, a writ claims.
The High Court writ filed yesterday says Dr Jennie Ng Ching-wah accidentally punctured a 33-year-old woman's bowel wall, allowing germs to seep into her stomach and infect it.
It claims the doctor was inexperienced and untrained in both the surgery and surgical equipment.
The writ claims the doctor operated with only an anaesthetist.
The patient, accounts clerk Amy Ng Lai-kuen, died a week later. The dead woman's husband, Lai Ming-Shui, 34, and her mother, Tang Fu, 62, are suing Dr Ng for more than $1.3 million.
Amy Ng was admitted to the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital on May 14 last year for a large tumour to be cut from her uterus, the writ says.
Dr Ng removed it using a machine called a motorised morcelator, but she performed the surgery unassisted - a fatal mistake, the writ alleges.
'The use of a motorised morcelator requires the use of at least three hands,' the writ says. 'One to hold and position the camera, one to position and hold the tissue to be cut and a third to hold the motorised morcelator.' The morning after the surgery Dr Ng's patient was found in shock. Emergency surgery revealed her bowel wall had been punctured, the writ said, and her abdomen was infected by 'multiple bowel organisms'.
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