Dad goes in for gallbladder surgery and receives impromptu vasectomy instead

A man who was planning to start a family with his new girlfriend left hospital livid after his doctors accidentally performed a vasectomy on him. 

Jorge Base, a 41-year-old Argentinian man, told local press how he’d gone into the state-run Florencio Diaz Hospital in Cordoba, a few hours north west of Buenos Aires, to have his gallbladder removed last Wednesday. 

The mix-up is believed to have occurred because Base’s surgery was delayed by 24 hours to a day on which vasectomies, rather than gallbladder removals, are performed at the facility. 

Base said in a recent TV interview: ‘I have three grown-up boys who are grown-up but I was dreaming of having a girl.

‘Doctors have already explained to me the possibilities of reversing the error are minimal.’

He added: ‘I feel so angry and helpless. I can’t understand how they made such a mistake when it had gallbladder written all over my medical records.

‘I’d like to find a solution but the solution the health professionals are giving me is artificial insemination if I want to father another child.’

Base’s lawyer, Diego Larrey, says that his client initially wanted to die when he woke from under anaesthesia and realised what had happened. 

Larrey said: ‘The hospital ended up performing the gall bladder operation the same day which was the only one he should have undergone.

‘That operation should have taken place last Tuesday and was reprogrammed to the following day at 9am.

‘My client wasn’t asked anything when he arrived at hospital which surprised him. They put his gown on him and took him to the operating theatre.

‘A nurse was the one who told him a mistake had been made when he came round after the op.

‘The confusion apparently occurred because on Wednesday they don’t do gall bladder operations at the hospital and he ended up in the list of people in for vasectomies by mistake.’

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