The current inquest on Maria De Jesus, a pregnant woman who was diagnosed with appendicitis and died after her second surgical operation, reveals that trainee surgeons took out the ovary instead of the appendix. The patient was already five months pregnant when admitted at Queen's Hospital in Romford, Essex due to severe abdominal pain.

According to the investigation at Walthamstow Coroner's Court, Maria De Jesus was scheduled to have her appendix removed last October 23, 2011 but trainee surgeons conducted the operation without the supervision of the consultant surgeon. The trainee surgeons ended up removing her healthy ovary instead of the appendix.

Maria De Jesus was discharged after the operation but two weeks later, she returned to the hospital complaining the abdominal pain just got worse. The mistake was discovered when the doctors read the patient's histopathology report where it was verified that no appendix was evident on microscopy.

Dr. Sunita Sharma revealed during the inquest that she became confused on the pregnant patient's condition and came to a decision to thoroughly check the pathology results. "It didn't make sense that a healthy young woman with appendicitis wasn't recovering after the appendix had been removed. I looked at the results and it showed that her ovary had been removed and not her appendix. I could not believe it, I was shocked," Dr. Sharma shared.

The pregnant woman from Wroxwall Road, Dagenham had to undergo a second operation to properly remove the appendix. Unfortunately, Maria De Jesus had a miscarriage, suffered sepsis which was caused by the appendicitis and died after the surgical operation.

Maria De Jesus' cause of death declared on November 11, 2011 was multiple organ failure due to severe sepsis caused by oophorectomy, the procedure of removing the ovary, and appendectomy. Adelino De Jesus, Maria's husband, blames the surgeons for the "unlawful killing' of his pregnant wife and he declared that he wants legal action on the incident.

"We wouldn't have ever imagined what they had done. My wife's death could have been prevented, I am sure of it. By the time they realized how serious the situation was, it was too late. This is neglect, this is an unlawful killing. If my wife had been given treatment by fully qualified staff she could still be alive," Adelino De Jesus stated.

Coroner Chinyere Inyama stated that the patient's condition got only worse because there was a loss on "window of opportunity" due to the lack of proper protocols. "The absence of protocols for reporting adverse histopathological findings resulted in the loss of a window of opportunity to provide treatment to the deceased that could have affected the outcome," the coroner declared.

Averil Dongworth, the Chief Executive of the Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospital Trust which runs the Queen's hospital, acknowledged the legal responsibility on the incident and offered their apology to the family of Maria De Jesus. "An extensive trust wide action plan was drawn up following Mrs. De Jesus' death in 2011 to ensure that such a tragic incident will not happen again," Dongworth assured.

At the moment, the General Medical Council is conducting their investigation on the eight medical staff involved in the surgical operation of Maria De Jesus including the senior surgical consultant, Dr. Babatunde Coker.

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