A Liverpool hospital has been forced to apologise after a man scheduled for a minor operation was mistakenly given a vasectomy.
An investigation has been launched by the Royal Liverpool University Hospital into how a man who was supposed to have a “minor urological procedure” ended up having a vasectomy, and the doctor who performed the procedure will not operate again until the investigation is complete.
Dr Peter Williams, medical director, said:
“We can confirm that a patient who was scheduled to have different minor urological procedure was wrongly given a vasectomy.
We greatly regret the distress that this has caused him. We have apologised unreservedly to the patient and we are offering him our full support.
We take any incident such as this extremely seriously and report them at the highest level in the trust and to our regulators.”
Doctors have attempted to reverse the vasectomy since the original operation, but it is no clear whether that operation was successful, with the operation having a 55% success rate, according to NHS England.
As a result of the mistake, the hospital could face a compensation claim of up to £100,000.