LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas Children’s Hospital surgeon mutilated their infant son in a botched circumcision, a Jonesboro couple says in a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital, doctor and nurses, claiming the error left the boy - described as a “cripple” - with a disfigured “fragment.”
The procedure, performed two years ago today, cost the boy, who turns 3 in July, half his penis, according to the 21-page complaint before Judge Tim Fox in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Thursday. Jonesboro attorney Tony Wilcox said Friday that the toddler has undergone numerous surgeries with Texas specialists.
“He is continuing to undergo extensive rehabilitation and treatment,” Wilcox said. “He has a long uphill battle ahead of him. A full recovery is not expected. There has been no significant improvement despite the best experts in Dallas.”
Hospital officials said they couldn’t address the accusations because they haven’t seen the family’s lawsuit.
“As of this writing, Arkansas Children’s Hospital has not been served with summons or complaint,” communications director Dan McFadden said Friday in a news release. “It would be premature to discuss any details of a lawsuit until we’ve had opportunity for legal review.”
The boy was born with hypospadias, a relatively common penis defect, diagnosed almost at birth, according to the lawsuit by parents Erica Smith and Brian Christopher Knowlton Jr., on the boy’s behalf.
Typically the condition is fixed using tissue that would be removed by a circumcision and requires the services of a pediatric urologist, the suit states. The family had made arrangements to consult a Children’s Hospital urologist about repairs.
But Dr. Robert Jeffrey Jackson, who had operated to correct the boy’s intestinal problems, told the family the boy, then 7 months old, didn’t have the defect and that he could circumcise him in a 45-minute procedure, the filing states. Jackson, 54, who also practices at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, told the parents that a pediatric urologist was “unnecessary,” the lawsuit states.
“The parents accepted Dr. Jackson’s explanation of their child’s condition ... given the reputation that [the hospital] has for employing the best and most-qualified pediatric physicians in the state,” the filing states.
After beginning the procedure, Jackson realized he was wrong about the boy but had already damaged the penis, the court filing states.
“At that point, having made the mistake, rather than suspending the procedure and consulting a pediatric urologist, Dr. Jackson attempted to repair the damage he had caused,” the lawsuit states.
The repair effort did the most lasting damage, Wilcox said Friday. According to the lawsuit, the parents didn’t learn the extent of their son’s injuries until a week after the March 2009 operation when the bandages were removed. The injuries were so severe, according to the filing, that when the parents questioned Jackson’s staff about how to change the boy’s bandages, workers discouraged the family from taking the boy to a hospital to have future bandages removed because hospital workers would “freak out” when they saw the wounds.
The suit accuses Jackson of medical negligence in ignoring the boy’s medical history and performing a “highly inappropriate” operation then not stopping the procedure once he realized the boy’s condition.
The parents are asking for a jury trial for monetary damages that will encompass all the boy’s medical expenses, the family’s related costs of traveling for surgeries, along with the boy’s pain, suffering and mental anguish for his “scars and disfigurement.”
The lawsuit also alleges that nurses were negligent in failing to properly assess the boy’s condition and in not reporting his condition and Jackson’s mistakes to hospital supervisors. The hospital also didn’t do enough to make sure the parents were adequately informed about their son’s condition, the proper procedure to repair it and the possible consequences of such an operation, the lawsuit states.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/05/2011