Wrong kidney removed due to ‘human error’

ONE of the country’s top paediatric consultants has admitted he was responsible for a “human error” which led to the wrong kidney being removed from a young boy at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin in 2008.

Professor Martin Corbally, consultant paediatric surgeon, told a hearing of the Irish Medical Council that during an outpatients’ clinic on January 17, 2008, he had mistakenly written down the wrong kidney to be removed from the patient.

The IMC’s Fitness to Practise Committee has heard that no doctor at Our Lady’s had subsequently looked at the boy’s X-rays before the operation to remove the kidney on March 21, 2008.