City girl’s doc dreams end in Russia as botched surgery turns her invalid
Anaesthesia Overdose During Operation Blamed For 19-Yr-Old’s Condition
Ajitha Karthikeyan | TNN 30 august 2009 Times Of INDIA Chennai
Chennai: With tears of joy blurring her eyes, Nivetha Kumari, a teenager from the city had waved goodbye to her parents and boarded a flight to Moscow in September 2008, to chase her childhood dream of studying medicine and becoming a doctor. But four months later, she returned home on a stretcher, her hopes and dreams shattered, allegedly due to negligence by Russian doctors.
Nineteen-year-old Nivetha, from a middle-class family, suffered brain damage after she was allegedly administered an overdose of an anaesthetic drug in a Russian hospital during an appendicitis surgery in October 2008. The girl who aspired to serve the poor is now being treated at the Government General Hospital, Madras Medical College (she has been here since February 2009), unable to remember her own name or recognise her parents.
According to medical reports by Russian doctors, complications arose after Nivetha developed allergy to lignocaine administered to her prior to surgery. However, tests taken at GH showed that she was not allergic to the anaesthetic, said doctors. “The allergy theory must have been floated to cover up complications that could have occurred during surgery,” they noted. “Nivetha was always a brilliant student and knows eight languages. She used to serve in homes for the elderly during holidays and chose the medical profession to serve society. We didn’t want to disappoint her, so we spent beyond our means to send her to Russia,” says her mother, Subathra Devi.
Nivetha, who joined the Kuban State Medical University in Krasnodar, near Moscow, suffered severe stomach pain. When it became intolerable, she was rushed to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with acute phlegmonous appendicitis and was operated upon. During surgery, she suffered brain damage due to lack of blood supply and cardiac arrest. Though doctors resuscitated her, she lost consciousness and had to be put on ventilator.
Learning about Nivetha’s condition, her father, R Ravikumar, mobilised money and rushed to Russia with his wife. “Our heart broke when we saw her. We stayed there for more than three months in extremely cold conditions,” says Subathra.
With help from the Indian embassy, Nivetha was shifted to Moscow and subsequently to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, where doctors successfully took her off the ventilator.
“Though she is able to sit with support and move her limbs, she is not able to recognise people. As she has developed a respiratory problem, we have created an ostomy (opening) in the trachea. With many studies on regeneration of brain cells by transplanting stem cells, we’ve suggested the therapy to her parents but we need to get clearance from the ministry of biotechnology,” the doctors said. |