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I have misplaced my glasses from time to time so I guess it is hard to make the facts of this malpractice case into a criminal matter. But, leaving a foot-long surgical instrument inside a patient seems pretty careless. The official medical malpractice lingo would be a retained foreign object. This surgical team must have had a kickoff to make. The story is posted at Boston.com.

A Belmont woman living as a man was awarded $280,000 on Thursday by a jury that found two doctors negligent for leaving a surgical instrument in his abdomen following an operation.

Alex Mitchell, 38, said his pain and vomiting after the January 2001 operation were at first written off as gallstones and ovarian cysts. But an X-ray confirmed the presence of the foot-long surgical instrument, called an Adept Med Fish, which is designed to shield internal organs during suturing.

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