Ovaries and kidneys are located 25 to 30 centimeters apart, so surgeons could not remove the kidney through the incision made to operate on an ovarian tumor, the hospital’s director Tran Son Thach said.

“Moreover, the operation lasted 85 minutes for surgeons to remove the tumor, cut out the ovaries and other related parts, so it is not long enough to take the kidney,” he told the conference held in HCMC.

More importantly, obstetricians do not have expertise in removing kidneys, according to Thach.

Urinary Department Head Tran Ngoc Sinh from Cho Ray Hospital who was invited to the conference, said patient N.T.N.T was given spinal anesthesia during the surgery, while kidney surgery requires complete anesthesia.

In addition, for kidney surgery, surgeons have to make an incision in the patient’s back, Sinh said. For ovarian tumor surgery, the incision is made in the lower abdomen.

The medical waste from the operation has also been identified as an ovarian tumor, not a kidney, Sinh said.

T., 53, complained to news agencies on Monday that she underwent ovarian surgery on November 26 last year at Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital and was released in December.

On November 2 last year T. had her health checked at the HCMC’s Medic Diagnosis Center. The test results showed she had a large ovarian tumor, while she was not suffering from kidney stones.

However, when she had a check-up at the medical center in October this year, the results said she didn’t have a left kidney.

She thought the test results might be wrong so she got a second test at Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital last month, which confirmed that she only had one kidney, making her believe the surgeons at Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital had stolen her other one.

Some experts supposed that T. had been born with only one kidney, and the 20-centimeter ovarian tumor had concealed the missing kidney in the scans. The rate of people born with one kidney in the world is one in every 1,100, which is not that rare, according to Sinh.

Thach told the conference that they still needed to contact the patient to give her more details.

Reported by Thanh Tung