A jury in America found Yale New Haven Hospital negligent after an 85-year-old woman was left blind after a 2019 surgery, awarding her a payout of $15.1m, reports WTNH News8.
Lioudmila Pylev, then 78, went blind after a toxic antiseptic solution was allowed to drip into and stay in her only seeing eye while she was unconscious during brain surgery on 2 April 2019.
The operation was to treat a non-cancerous brain tumour. The case alleged, and the jury concluded, that neurosurgeon Dr Jennifer Moliterno negligently handled toxic antiseptic chemicals, causing permanent loss of vision in Pyleva’s right eye.
The chemicals that had dripped into her eye were Hibiclens and ChloraPrep, two solutions used to sterilise incision sites. These have been known as toxic to the eye since the 1980s, as they can cause irreversible damage: they must be used with meticulous care to prevent them from entering the eye.
An examination when she woke from surgery found that nearly 90% of her corneal surface had been destroyed by the solution. Since Pyleva has lacked “useful sight” in her left eye since childhood, she was rendered completely functionally blind.
“It wasn’t just that Yale and Moliterno denied the obvious truth that chlorhexidine had more than likely leaked into her eye,” said attorney Josh Koskoff. “But Yale also rejected and challenged the observations of its own Yale New Haven Hospital providers who treated Pyleva after the surgery. Yale should be better than that, and we are grateful that the jury rejected this defence.”
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