$1.2 Million Settlement for Woman Whose Bladder Was Sutured to the Vaginal Cuff During a Hysterectomy
After trial: The case settled before trial, so there was no verdict or appeal. The defendant was not named in the published report, and whether the full amount was paid is not public.
Won by Emroch & Kilduff.
A 36-year-old woman had an abdominal hysterectomy for chronic pelvic pain and a complex ovarian cyst. Her gynecologist sutured the entire posterior wall of the bladder into the closure of the vaginal cuff and did not recognize it before ending the operation. She needed emergency surgery, a fistula repair and repeated Botox injections, and was left with permanently reduced bladder capacity. The Fredericksburg Circuit Court case settled for $1.2 million on April 23, 2024.
What happened
A 36-year-old woman went to a gynecologist with chronic pelvic pain and a complex ovarian cyst. After the consultation, an abdominal hysterectomy with removal of the left ovary and fallopian tube was planned. This is a major operation done through an incision in the abdomen, and the surgeon works close to the bladder, which sits directly in front of the uterus and vagina. The operation went ahead.
According to the case report in Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the surgeon sutured the entire posterior wall of the bladder to the vaginal cuff while closing, the stitched seam left at the top of the vagina once the uterus is removed. The plaintiff's claim was that the surgeon did not realize what had happened and finished the operation with the bladder caught in the closure, so the error was not corrected on the table.
The signs showed up after surgery. She had frank blood in her urine and a marked drop in urine output. A cystogram found a tear in the bladder, and she went back to the operating room on an emergency basis. There, surgeons found that the entire posterior wall of the bladder had been obliterated and ruptured where it had been drawn into the vaginal cuff closure.
The bladder was repaired surgically, but the damage did not stop there. She developed a vesicovaginal fistula, an abnormal channel between the bladder and the vagina, which required its own surgical repair. She lost sensation in the bladder, its capacity was reduced, and she had recurrent urinary tract infections. She was left with permanently increased urinary urgency and frequency, and she needed multiple Botox injections after the repair to manage the bladder's overactivity.
She sued the gynecologist in Fredericksburg Circuit Court. Howard Bullock and William Kilduff of Richmond represented her. The case resolved by settlement on April 23, 2024, for $1.2 million, before any trial, about seven months before the report appeared. Virginia Lawyers Weekly reported the result on November 4, 2024. The published report does not name the defendant.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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