BANGALORE: A 37-year-old homemaker died after she was allegedly administered an overdose of anaesthesia at a private hospital here on Friday afternoon.
Vyshali Jain, wife of textile merchant Bharat L Jain and resident of Akkipet, was admitted to Ganesh Nursing Home, which also goes by the name Diagram Health Care, at Mehkri Circle on Friday morning.
Deepak B, a family member, said Vyshali was admitted to the hospital for removal of a tumour in the uterus. “Dr Devaraj of the nursing home took her into the operation theatre at around 3.30pm. She was administered anaesthesia,” he told TOI.
Within minutes, the OT staff came out and asked the family members if Vyshali had epilepsy. When the relatives replied in the negative, the staff told them she had started shivering.
The patient was brought in an unresponsive state. She had suffered a cardiac arrest and the ECG readings were nil. We put her in the ICU and tried to revive her heartbeat. We cannot say exactly what caused her death; that has to be revealed in the postmortem report. This a medico-legal case…
Dr Nagendra Prasad | icu
registrar, Fortis, Seshadripuram
We have been kept in the dark, complain relatives:
Some family members rushed into the OT and found two nurses trying to pump Vyshali’s heart. “No one told us what had happened. Dr Devaraj said there was an emergency and Vyshali would be shifted to Fortis,” the relatives said.
Around 6pm, Vyshali was shift ed to the ICU of Fortis, Seshadripuram. “Thirty minutes later, Fortis doctors told us that Vyshali had been brought dead. If she had died earlier, why did Fortis admit her to the ICU?” the family asked.
The bereaved family has filed a complaint with the Sadashivanagar police accusing Dr Devaraj and his team of doctors at Ganesh Nursing Home and the doctors at Fortis of causing Vyshali’s death due to medical negligence. The complaints also said she was administered an overdose of anaesthesia at Ganesh Nursing Home.
Dr Devaraj was not reachable; his mobile had been switched off.
Employees of the nursing home said only Dr Devaraj could reply to queries and he was busy attending to patients.
A Fortis spokesperson said: “We could not have refused to admit the patient, who was brought to us in an emergency situation. The emergency originated at the nursing home where she had gone for a surgery. We did our best to save the patient. It is a medico-legal case.”
The body was shifted to MS Ramaiah Hospital, where a postmortem was conducted on Saturday morning. “We have sent viscera samples to FSL and will mention the cause of death based on its report,” doc tors at Ramaiah Hospital said.
Police have booked a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder
