Foreign bodies accidentally left in the abdominal cavity : with report of one hundred and fifty-five cases / by August Schachner.

  • Schachner, August, 1865-1941.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Foreign bodies accidentally left in the abdominal cavity : with report of one hundred and fifty-five cases / by August Schachner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the sponge appeared in the vagina during an irrigation. The patient finally died of pyaemia, January 16, 1887. (100) A celebrated German operator related to Neugebauer in the Eighth Congress of Gynaecologists that he had an occasion to perform an abdominal section upon a patient that had been previously operated for an apparently inoperable tumor. An artery forceps that the former operator had accidentally left behind was found in the abdominal cavity. (101) Professor Krasowski was legally proceeded against for having left a sponge in the abdominal cavity. The suit resulted in an acquittal. (102) Buschbeck (“Ueber Fremdenkorper in der Bauchhohle,” Cen- tralblatt fiir Gyn'dkologie, 1899, No. 45, p. 1375). A patient, thirty-four years old, was brought to the Dresden Clinic with a suspected ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The abdominal section was performed by Dr. Busch- beck, who represented Dr. Leopold. The operation was uneventful. The burst left tube and ovary were removed. A great number of gauze com- presses were used on account of troublesome intestinal loops. The pa- tient made an easy recovery and was dismissed after four weeks. After two years of the most perfect health the woman again appeared, com- plaining of colic in the right side. A rough, irregular swelling the size of a fist was found on the right side of the uterus, which after some months had grown larger and nearer the abdominal wall. The patient was again examined January, 1899, when she had fever and severe pains. The ab- dominal scar had opened at the lower end. After enlarging the fistula, from which much pus flowed, a gauze cloth appeared that had evidently been left behind in the abdominal cavity during the laparotomy that had been performed two and a half years previously. This had entered the intestine, and was now ejecting itself by way of the perforation. Dr. Stelzner performed another laparotomy with resection of the intestine twenty centimetres in length. The woman recovered. (103) In the discussion, Leopold cited a case upon which he had performed an autopsy. Death had ensued a few hours after the total ex- tirpation of the cancerous uterus. A gauze cloth was found, but it could not be determined whether it had remained behind in the abdominal cavity or whether it was inserted into the vagina as a tamponade. (104-106) Herr Meinert mentions in the discussion three similar cases, as follows: (a) Three weeks after an afebrile laparotomy, painful resistance in the right abdominal half ensued. Incision. Removal of a mull compress that lay close under the peritoneum. The wound was tamponed. Re- covery. (b) A virgin, twenty years of age, with double-sided tuberculosis of the tubes. January, 1893, a pelvic abscess was opened through the vagina. In April of the same year ventral extirpation of the adnexa. Fever fol- lowed. On the ninth day a discharge of pus through the abdominal scar. Fever still continued. A through drain from the abdominal wound to the vagina, with daily irrigation. At the end of May, a tumor, the size of a hen’s egg, was discovered to the left of the umbilicus. After a few days this changed its position to the left inguinal region, and finally disap- peared in the depth of the pelvis. A foreign body was suspected. A