A Queens grandmother has to wear a helmet for the rest of her life because a doctor left a sponge inside her head during surgery, her lawyer and family charge.
Mary Pober, 84, of Elmhurst, was left disfigured and debilitated after the surgeon later removed the sponge along with a significant portion of her skull, said the suit filed last month in Queens Supreme Court.
“There’s skin, but no bone covering her brain,” said Stanley Shapiro, Pober’s lawyer. “Any fall could be fatal. Any blow to the head could be fatal.”
In September 2007, Dr. Ron Alterman operated on Pober’s brain to remove a subdural hematoma at Elmhurst Hospital, but failed to remove from her head a Gelfoam sponge used to absorb blood and assist clotting, the lawsuit alleges.
She developed an acute infection and two months after the initial surgery, Alterman again operated on Pober, removing the sponge and the part of her skull where the bone had died, Shapiro said.
Pober, a retired seamstress, is very depressed and suffers almost constant headaches, said her son Joseph, a doctor.
She also needs to take anti-seizure medicine, which leaves her disoriented.
“She’s very depressed and fearful to leave the house,” Joseph Pober said, adding that she is unable to take care of her 86-year-old husband.
Alterman, a board-certified neurological surgeon and an associate professor of neurology at Mount Sinai Medical School, denied any wrongdoing.
“There was absolutely no sponge left in her head,” he said. “Infections are a risk of any operation.”