Sutton Dryfhout has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Benjamin Ticho, a Chicago ophthalmologist who allegedly performed a surgery on the wrong eye.
Dryfhout was 19 when she had an operation in August 2017 to correct a lazy eye and remove a cyst in that same eye. According to the lawsuit, she only consented to surgery on the left eye, but her right eye was was bleeding and in pain after the anesthesia wore off.
“There was a nurse at my bedside and I said ‘why is my right eye hurting? You weren’t supposed to touch my right eye.’ She said ‘I don’t know, let me figure that out for you,’” Dryfhout said.
The lawsuit further claims that Dr. Ticho came in the recovery room and told the nurse he forgot something and began operating in Dryfhout’s left eye.
“Sutton was conscious, awake and in pain when Dr. Ticho operated on her left eye. Dr. Ticho stuck instruments, including a needle, scissors and a cautery pen, into Sutton’s left eye,” the lawsuit said.
“Someone was holding my head, holding my eye open,” Dryfhout recalled. “He brought a needle up from – I don’t know where – and started sticking the needle in my eye. It was burning. He brought scissors up and started cutting. I was scared. I was telling him to stop and he wasn’t stopping.”
Dryfhout’s lawyer, Valerie Leopold, said she found it especially troubling that Dryfhout underwent a procedure without anesthesia.
“Anytime a patient asks you to stop, especially in a non-emergency situation, not only as a lawyer but also as a parent, there’s an obligation to stop,” Leopold said.
The results of the operation still affect Dryfhout to this day. She says she has double vision and other complications from the procedure.
This isn’t the first time a doctor has been accused of medical malpractice. Just last month, a Polk County jury awarded $12.25 million to a man who underwent prostate surgery and then discovered he didn’t have cancer.
An Iowa Clinic pathologist mixed up slides of Rickie Huitt’s non-cancerous tissues samples with those of a man who had prostate cancer. The error resulted in a misdiagnosis, causing a surgeon to remove Huitt’s prostate gland.
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