Clik here to view.
Great Ormond Street being sued by 11-year-old after operation left her with extensive brain damage
An 11-year-old girl is suing Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London, accusing a doctor of injecting glue into her brain.
Maisha Najeeb has extensive brain damage, can barely move, is blind in one eye and needs around the clock support. High court papers seen by the Guardian claim her condition is the result of the blunder at the respected hospital, which is renowned for the quality of its care.
Maisha, from Redbridge, north-east London, was 10 when she had a routine operation at the hospital last June to relieve an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in her skull. An AVM can cause complications when it leads to bleeding, but still meant she could lead a normal life.
The rare congentital condition involves arteries and veins getting tangled and occurs in about 1% of people. AVMs in the brain are a particular concern, because they can involve bleeding in the head.
The legal documents supporting Maisha's action for damages against the hospital claim the accident happened when two syringes got mixed up in the operating theatre because they were not labelled. One contained glue, which was to be used to treat her blood vessels, and the other contained a dye which would highlight the blood flow in her head during the procedure.
While the hospital has formally responded by indicating an intention to defend the claim, the legal argument is likely to centre on how much of her brain damage was due to the glue and how much from her existing condition.
Maisha's family claims the glue travelled from an artery into her brain, where it led to her suffering extensive, permanent damage which has deprived her of most of her mental and physical functions. She is now in a wheelchair, needs help with all her basic functions, and cannot concentrate for long. The NHS is currently paying for her to receive residential care at a specialist unit.
"Before this she was top of her class in primary school, loved dancing and poetry, and her ambition was to be a doctor – an eye specialist. Now she's 100% dependent and needs two carers looking after her 24/7," said her father, Sajid Hussain, a financial adviser.
"This has been absolutely devastating for Maisha, me and my family. Before this procedure Maisha was a happy, active child who was thriving at school. She now needs constant care and will be dependent on others for the rest of her life. I want to know that hospitals conducting these kind of procedures in the future will put adequate systems in place to make sure no child suffers in this way again," he added.
The particulars of claim relating to Maisha's case have been lodged in the high court in London, alongside a medical expert's report detailing her mental and physical disabilities. The claim document states that lawyers acting for the hospital have admitted that staff did mistakenly inject glue into her brain and that this did cause some damage to her brain.
It refers to a letter from the hospital's solicitors last December which described the glue injection as "inadvertent". It said that "in breach of duty of care to [Maisha] there was an inadvertent injection of polymerised glue into the right internal carotid during the embolisation procedure on 2 June 2010."
The same letter, from Weightmans lawyers, also admitted that Maisha "suffered some neurological injury as a result of the inadvertent injection", the particulars of claim adds.
However, Great Ormond Street refused to state if it still stood by that letter. In a statement to the Guardian a spokeswoman said: "The trust immediately apologised sincerely to Maisha and her family. We would like to reiterate these apologies. The trust has undertaken a comprehensive investigation of Maisha's care, and implemented changes to improve our systems and processes.
"It has passed to the family the results of its internal inquiry, which it undertook in order to produce a serious untoward incident report, as hospitals accused of serious negligence have to do.
"Naturally we are in ongoing contact with the family to provide them with support, and we have of course shared the findings of our investigation with them. It is inappropriate for us to discuss Maisha's treatment in the public domain. Our duty of care remains to Maisha and her family."
Edwina Rawson of Field Fisher Waterhouse solicitors, representing the family, said: "This was a tragic incident that could have been avoided had the syringes been marked in a way that made them distinguishable. Maisha has been very seriously injured as a result of the mistake. If mistakes such as this can be made at Great Ormond Street, then there is a risk that similar incidents could happen in other hospitals."
Hospitals' systems of labelling syringes, so that their contents are clearly marked, need to be reviewed to avoid the same situation arising again, Rawson added.