Doctor Operated On Healthy Part Of Brain

A neurosurgeon mistakenly operated on the healthy part of a cancer patient’s brain after pulling pictures of the wrong person’s skull, hospital officials said Thursday.

Rajeswari Ayyappan, the 59-year-old mother of Indian film star Sridevi, was in stable condition Thursday after the botched May 26 operation.

No one at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the world-renowned hospital where the operation took place, or at New York Hospital, where Ayyappan was transferred, would disclose the extent of the damage caused.

Sloan-Kettering spokeswoman Christine Westerman would not say how long the surgery lasted before the mistake was realized.

Ayyappan had been brought from India to Sloan-Kettering for an operation to remove a brain tumor. But the surgeon brought another patient’s diagnostic films into the operating room, then opened the woman’s head and began searching her healthy right temporal lobe for the tumor, the center said. The temporal lobes control memory, emotion and some sensory functions.

The doctor’s surgical privileges were suspended and he was stripped of his administrative post, Westerman said.

“We have acknowledged that a mistake was made, and we have extended a heartfelt apology to the patient’s family,” said Dr. Joseph Simone, Sloan-Kettering’s physician-in-chief.

Before the mistake, only one complaint had been filed against Sloan-Kettering in the last two years, said state Health Department spokesman Bill Fagel.

While Westerman refused to provide the doctor’s name, New York Newsday said other physicians identified him as Dr. Ehud Arbit.

A partial removal of the tumor was performed at New York Hospital, where Ayyappan remains for follow-up care, including radiation therapy, said hospital spokeswoman Myrna Manners.

Sridevi is one of India’s most popular film stars, and the top performer in the Tamil-language movie business in southern India.