Henan woman's kidney stolen during surgery

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-02-22

A cartoon depicting a patient's kidney being stolen during
a surgery at a hospital in Henan. (Photo/CFP)

A woman in China's Henan province claims that one of her kidneys was stolen during one of her past surgeries, but the case remains unsolved despite the lawsuit she filed against the hospitals in 2011, Hong Kong-based Hua Shang Daily reports.

Xu Xiuying, a fruit vendor in Henan's Xiangcheng, first found out about her missing right kidney during an ultrasound checkup in 2008, which was two years after she underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor on her colon, the newspaper said.

Xu, who is married to a teacher and has a son, underwent the surgery in the city's First People's Hospital on Nov. 14, 2006. She began feeling pain around her waist and back following the six-hour operation.

She had another surgery to remove a uterine fibroid at another hospital in Xiangcheng on Oct. 19, 2007, the newspaper added.

Some local media reports said that Xu initially thought she was born with just one kidney and did not become suspicious until 2011, when she learned about a doctor being sentenced in another case for illegally selling human kidneys.

Several checkups later confirmed that her right kidney had been removed. This discovery led Xu to file a civil lawsuit against the two hospitals in 2011, seeking damages on the grounds of a medical dispute.

The criminal nature of the case required Xu to undergo a medical examination. However, the report published by the examiners on June 2013 failed to conclusively determine what happened to Xu and merely concluded that her kidney was more likely to have been removed during her 2006 surgery.

An expert also said the questionable circumstances of Xu's 2006 surgery, which included the unusually long time it took to complete the operation, the extended length of the incision and the prolonged period allotted for the blood tests beforehand.

In addition, the newspaper said that an ultrasound check was conducted on Xu's kidneys before the 2006 surgery.

Conflicting claims have arisen between the hospital and local authorities on whether an investigation has already been initiated to resolve Xu's plight, even though the medical report was submitted to authorities to pursue a criminal case in 2013, according to the newspaper.