SHOCKING: 12-Year Old Boy’s Intestine Vanishes After Surgeries At LASUTH, Private Hospital, Mother Begs Sanwo-Olu To Intervene

 

• Gov Sanwo-Olu, Please Intervene, Doctors Can’t Explain How My 12-year-old Son’s Organ Got Missing –Mother

 

• The Boy Was Mutilated, Intestine Removed At Private Hospital, What Was Done In LASUTH Was Corrective Life Saving Surgery, Says LASUTH CMD

 

• Organ Intact When We Referred Patient To LASUTH – Obitoks MD

 

 

There is a shocking and disturbing occurrence between Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH and a private hospital, Obitoks, in which a patient’s small intestine disappeared without trace.

 

The mother of the patient, Abiodun Deborah is begging the Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwoolu to probe the mysterious disappearance of the small intestine of her 12-year-old son, Adebola Akin-Bright while receiving treatment at LASUTH.

 

Abiodun’s life was thrown into jeopardy when surgeons at LASUTH informed her about the disappearance of her son’s intestine after a corrective surgery performed on the boy on July 14, 2023.

 

Abiodun said his boy was referred to LASUTH from a private hospital, Obitoks Medical Centre situated at Ileepo in the Alimosho Local Government area of the state on June 17 following a complication from surgery to correct intestinal obstruction.

 

Narrating her ordeal, Abiodun said, “Sometime in February this year, my boy started vomiting and stooling and the hospital we took him to suspected typhoid and he was treated but when his condition didn’t improve after about five days, we moved him to another hospital, Obitoks Medical Centre, where it was discovered that he had ruptured appendix which would require surgery. He was out of the hospital after about two weeks looking so healthy again. He had even resumed school, doing well until June when he complained of pain in the stomach. We went back to the hospital where it was discovered that he had intestinal obstruction and he underwent another surgery.

 

“There appeared a complication as the boy was still draining bilious fluid more than seven days after the surgery, the CMD at Obitoks, Dr Abayomi Baiyewu then said the boy would require another surgery and according to him he had already secured the services of a Professor from a teaching hospital to be part of the operation. But we declined and urged him to refer us to LASUTH where we believed more robust care would be given to our child.

 

“We conducted a series of tests when we got to LASUTH, and the doctors there said the boy might not need to go through another surgery as the site where the bilious fluid was draining from could close up through conservative means but if not he would be operated upon. They asked us to buy different kinds of drugs, running many other tests until one Wednesday, about 25 days after we got to the hospital we noticed something like a burst from the site of an opening in his tummy and they decided that surgery would be conducted on him.”

 

Abiodun said the Consultant handling his son’s case told her after the surgery that when they opened up the boy, they found no small intestine in him and they could not guarantee that he would survive another five days.

 

She said the implication of the development was that the boy could no longer absolve nutrients from the food he consumes and may rely on total parenteral nutrition which would be given intravenously for the rest of his life.

 

“I was dumbfounded, it was like my whole life was shattered because it was a story that could be told in Nollywood. Where could a 26-feet long small intestine have gone to? We immediately contacted the surgeon who handled the first two surgeries and he wondered why LASUTH would claim they could not find bowel in the boy after spending 27 days with them. He insisted that he would never have referred us to the government hospital in such a condition and explicitly stated what he had done in his referral letter.

 

“The results of the test we ran when we got to LASUTH never indicated that such thing happened but they are insisting they didn’t find intestine in my boy. We are confused and we are begging the Lagos State government to unravel the puzzle. Since this incident, I have been buying total parenteral nutrition which costs about N65,000 and he takes two bags in three days, where would we be able to afford N110,000 every two days? From what we heard, except the boy undergoes an intestinal transplant, he may rely on TPN for life which could also damage his liver. The intestinal transplant is not only extremely expensive, it is not done anywhere in Africa according to the information we got. I am begging the Governor to save my son and also unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of his intestine for the sake of justice,” she added.

 

 

Meanwhile, the two hospitals involved have denied knowledge of what happened. While LASUTH claimed the patient’s intestine was mutilated and removed from the private hospital, Obitoks insisted that the boy’s organ was intact as at the time of the referral. The question now is: Who removed the small intestine and for what purpose?

 

 

Dr. Abay- omi Baiyewo, a family physician and MD of Obitoks, who said the boy was treated for typhoid and malaria, said: “When I saw him, I discovered that he had a distended abdomen on the right side.

 

“I diagnosed the case of a ruptured appendicitis that had to be operated on March 7. I invited a senior colleague, a pediatric surgeon from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, and we took him to the theatre where we discovered to our amazement that the appendicitis had ruptured and had gummed the small intestines to the rectum.

 

“At that moment, to remove the appendix would have been disastrous because you have to cut all the organs, and we tried to relieve the boy of the pain, and drain the pus from the abdomen. We reasoned that once it ceased to form, the ruptured intestine would heal by itself.” Baiyewo said the boy was referred to LASUTH on June 17, at the insistence of his mother, Deborah Akin-Bright.

 

In the referral, the doctor said, as expected, he explained what he did to the boy so as to guide his professional colleagues at LASUTH, who he anticipated would speed up action as Adebola’s case, required urgent attention. “A member of Adebola’s family was invited into the theatre to witness what we did; we did this because we had nothing to hide,” said Baiyewo.

 

“Unfortunately, the doctors at LASUTH as I gathered did not operate on him immediately until the portion of the abdomen, which we stitched after our surgery forcefully opened with faecal matter gushing out, according to the mother.

 

“Perhaps, it was this occurrence that forced the LASUTH doctors to quickly operate on him. But what they did or how they did it, I do not know since I was not in the surgery theatre with them,” he added.

 

However, LASUTH’s CMD, Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, who spoke for his hospital told Saturday Telegraph that the patient had been operated elsewhere and they had mutilated him, removing all his intestines.

 

“We did what was supposed to be a corrective surgery. I have a detailed report from my surgeon. The injury was there and an attempt to repair it was done here. He had been mutilated before he got here.

 

So, what we did here was an attempt to correct that.”

 

 Fabamwo added: “It’s only the doctors in the private hospital where the patient was first treated that will tell us what they did and what actually happened to the patient’s small intestine. Again that speaks to the quality of services being provided in some of our private hospitals. “We need to keep an eye on what some of them are doing.

 

“Let me say it clearly that the boy had been mutilated in the private hospital and we tried to correct that and we have records. A lot of the intestine was removed and a lot of damage was done. It was not done here, a correction was done here.”

 

In the same development, in a series of tweets, LASUTH, responding to accusation of being responsible for the boy’s missing small intestine, on Saturday collaborated the CMD’s submission as it stated that it only performed a corrective life-saving surgery on the boy who was brought to them due to serious complications following procedures conducted in a private hospital.

 

The hospital stated that it had proof to show its innocence and that it just performed corrective life saving surgery on the boy who had abdominal complications following his referral to the hospital and had nothing to do with the missing small intestine.

 

The tweets read partly “The attention of management of LASUTH has been drawn to some newspaper reports about a 12-year-old patient who was referred to our hospital from Obitoks Medical Centre, Ile-Epo, Abule-Egba area of Lagos State following complications resulting from repeated abdominal surgeries.

 

“First, we would like to state emphatically that we will not normally engage in discussions about patients’ clinical conditions on the pages of newspapers as this is against the ethics of best clinical practice.

 

“However, this rejoinder is necessary in order to clear the air and prevent misinformation. Expectedly, we will be circumspect in our response and ensure that the privacy of the innocent boy is protected.

 

“The clinical details will be provided and taken up at the level of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria if and when the matter is referred to that body.

 

“We have all the evidence required by law to show that what was carried out in LASUTH is a corrective LIFE SAVING SURGERY on a patient who had serious complications following surgeries performed in a private hospital.

 

Furthermore, it chided media platforms for publishing stories without seeking to hear from all parties involved, accordingly before, “going to press and publishing a story without taking time to hear from all parties involved is highly unprofessional as there was no effort made by the reporters…to speak to LASUTH authorities.”

 

It added that the boy is being taken care of and is under close observation and “all hands are on deck to continue to offer expert care, “LASUTH assured.

 

Obitoks’ MD: Our story

 

Dr. Baiyewo of Obitoks Hospital said once the appendix is ruptured, it forms a bag of pus and mesh together with faecal matter as time goes. “That is what happened and we tried to get the pus out and we put a tube in. It’s natural healing that would take care of the rest and after six months you can remove it. That’s why it has to be removed at the base. He got well and went back to school only to come back on June 4, with severe abdominal pain in the upper abdomen and he was vomiting.

 

We placed him on intravenous fluids thinking it was something minor. “When the vomiting persisted we dis- covered that he was having it in bouts; one minute he would be fine and the next he would be vomiting. We also discovered that he had swelling of the upper abdomen and there was obstruction. I told the mother that there is an obstruction and we had to open it up to free the obstruction because of the former rupture.

 

“We went in, I invited an anesthesiologist and another colleague and we went in and discovered that the boy had multiple obstructions in the intestines. “The appendix area was already sep- arating itself and it’s accessible this time because we had stemmed the appendix at the base. While going in there was this rupture in the intestine that had been there. I called the patient’s mother to come and see what was going on, she came and saw it and was praying that everything would be alright.

 

I told the mother we would have to close the hole and I showed her the blackish thing. “There was also this bind and how it came about we don’t know. We discovered that the part that was pressed by the upper abdomen was already blackish and that was the upper part of the small intestine and we needed to cut four inches of the blackish part. We joined it together in two layers and everything was looking good.

 

“On the fifth day, instead of the faecal matter continuing to come out, it stopped and he was discharging greenish matter, that’s the bile. The mother alerted me that he had stopped passing faecal matter and he was passing bile through the mouth. We stopped him from eating and we put a tube into his stomach. “I told the mother that the boy had to be reopened because there is drainage of the bile and that means there is an obstruction that is not letting it get to the intestine or there was a perforation.

 

That was the two things we suspected and the only thing we could do was to go in and see. We reasoned that to open it and see it remains the best. “We arranged for him to be opened. I invited other surgeons and one from LASUTH and an anaesthesiologist that would gas the boy but to my surprise, as I was waiting for the experts to come, by 3pm the patient’s mother came and told me they wanted the boy referred to LASUTH.

 

I told her she has spent so much money here so why not complete the procedure here and then let the boy go home but she insisted it was her final decision. “And I had to let her take the child because she has the right to the child. Baiyewo added: “I referred him to LASUTH and I stated in the referral note what I had done in the case. We were waiting for their findings. The next day I called and I was told they hadn’t done the examination.

 

I called her again and asked what was happening and she said that he had low potassium and that they were trying to beef it up. “When they eventually did their sur- gery, they went inside and came out with a video of the last part of the surgery. The beginning of the video was not shown to the mother. By this time as I was told part of the Duodenum was gone while the Ile- um was gone completely.

 

“They took it off; they said there was nothing like a small intestine there again. The woman was with me when we were doing our own surgery; she saw the small hole and how we closed it and everything we did. I’ve never heard it before in medicine that somebody will be without his intestine and a small boy like that for that matter.

 

“Like I said earlier, what we did was mentioned and properly explained in our referral note. Let me snap it to you through WhatsApp for you to see.” The doctor eventually sent the handwritten referral note via WhatsApp as he promised.

 

-New Telegraph