Medic still haunted by sight of unborn baby being decapitated during botched surgery

A MEDICAL practitioner on Friday (11) said she was still haunted by the incident in 2014 when an unborn baby’s neck was stretched before he was decapitated during a botched delivery.

Dr Yeswanthini Bhushan said during a hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing in Manchester that she had warned consultant gynaecologist Dr Vaishnavy Laxman to be careful multiple times during the delivery at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

“I knew that this baby was extremely fragile,” Dr Bhushan said, according to The Sun. “That the baby had significant bruising and that the neck was stretched. I told others to be careful.”

Removing the baby's head from his mother's uterus was “the most horrific experience anybody could have and it has haunted me so much.”

Dr Laxman was suspended after the botched surgery. She reportedly ignored advice to conduct a caesarean, choosing instead to deliver the baby naturally.

Describing the incident, the woman giving birth, who has not been named, told the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester: "I had been for a scan the previous Friday and I was told my son was breech and the nurse told me if anything had happened to my son it was going to be a C-section.

"But when I was taken to the labour suite nobody told me what was happening.

"A lot of people were talking they kept saying the baby needed to come out but nobody looked at me in the eye and told me what was going to happen.

"There were two doctors between my legs, one on my right hand side holding my hand and there were other people there too. I was examined by a doctor but she didn't say anything to me.

"They were checking for the baby's heartbeat and it had plummeted and that's when I was told it was going to come out.

The woman was only two-three cm dilated, but she was told to push.

As the infant’s mother came face to face with Dr Laxman at the tribunal, she said: “I don’t forgive you – I don’t forgive you.”

The doctor has denied contributing to the infant’s death.

The hearing continues.