For seven years, a New York nurse practitioner carried an invisible wound — a surgical needle left inside her abdomen after one of two operations at Mount Sinai, the very hospital where she has worked since 2013. It was not intuition or medical expertise that finally uncovered the source of her suffering, but a CT scan in October 2025, long after the damage had quietly accumulated. Her lawsuit against the hospital and three physicians is now a public reckoning with a private truth: that even the most sophisticated medical systems can fail the people who trust them most, and sometimes those peo
Surgical needle left in patient's abdomen for 7 years, lawsuit claims
A patient suffered seven years of severe unexplained physical pain and required a third surgery to remove the abandoned surgical needle from her abdomen.
Seven years of pain, and the answer was inside her all along
Mark
How does a surgical needle stay inside someone's body for seven years without being caught?
Mimi
The filing doesn't explain the mechanics of how it was missed—whether it was simply not counted during the instrument check, or whether it was counted but the count was wrong. What we know is that she had pain for seven years and no one connected it to a retained object.
Luke
That's the gap, isn't it? We don't know which of the two surgeries left it there, and we don't know what the hospital's instrument-tracking protocol actually is or whether it failed in a documented way.
Mark
She works there as a nurse practitioner. Did she not suspect something medical was wrong?
Mimi
She knew something was wrong—she had severe pain. But "something is wrong" is not the same as "a surgical needle is in your abdomen." Without imaging that specifically looked for a foreign object, there's no reason she would have landed on that diagnosis.
Luke
And we should note: the lawsuit claims negligence, but we don't have Mount Sinai's response or their account of what happened. We have the plaintiff's version through her attorney.
Mark
What happens next?
Mimi
The case is in Manhattan Supreme Court. The couple is seeking damages, though the amount hasn't been specified. That will likely come out in discovery or settlement negotiations.
Luke
The real question is whether this was a one-off failure or a pattern. One case doesn't tell us that. But it does tell us that even at a major hospital, with a patient who works in medicine, the system can fail completely.
Mark
And she had to have surgery again just to fix what the first surgeries caused.
Mimi
Exactly. Three surgeries total. The third one was just to undo the mistake of the first two.
El Pulso
- A 4cm surgical needle lay undetected in a woman's abdomen for seven years, silently driving pain that no one could diagnose or explain.
- The discovery arrived not through medical vigilance but through a routine CT scan in October 2025 — seven years after the first possible moment of negligence.
- The plaintiff is herself a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai, making the institutional failure both professionally intimate and deeply ironic.
- A third surgery was required to remove the needle, adding physical trauma to nearly a decade of unexplained suffering.
- A Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit now names Mount Sinai and three physicians, with neither the hospital nor the doctors offering any public response.
- The case is moving toward a damages determination that may force a major medical institution to account for one of medicine's most preventable errors.
For seven years, a New York nurse practitioner carried an invisible wound — a surgical needle left inside her abdomen after one of two operations at Mount Sinai, the very hospital where she has worked since 2013. It was not intuition or medical expertise that finally uncovered the source of her suffering, but a CT scan in October 2025, long after the damage had quietly accumulated. Her lawsuit against the hospital and three physicians is now a public reckoning with a private truth: that even the most sophisticated medical systems can fail the people who trust them most, and sometimes those people are the ones who know the system best.
Jana Petriganova DeGregoris spent seven years searching for an explanation for pain that would not relent. She sought medical care, endured tests, and watched her quality of life slowly diminish — unaware that the answer had been inside her body the entire time. In October 2025, a CT scan finally revealed a surgical needle, nearly four centimetres long, abandoned in her abdomen during one of two procedures performed between 2018 and 2021.
The first operation took place in June 2018, when two Mount Sinai physicians performed a caesarean section followed by plastic surgery to close the wound. Three years later, a separate surgical team carried out an abdominoplasty combined with a laparoscopic hernia repair. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by attorney John Cagney, does not identify which procedure was responsible — only that the negligence occurred, and that its consequences were severe and prolonged.
The irony is difficult to overlook. Petriganova DeGregoris has worked as a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai since 2013. She understands the protocols designed to prevent exactly this kind of error. Yet the system she knows intimately failed her, and she bore the cost in years of unresolved suffering. When the needle was finally identified, she required a third surgery to have it removed — a procedure that could address the object but not undo the years it had spent inside her.
She and her husband, Gerard, are now seeking unspecified damages from the hospital and the three named physicians. Mount Sinai and the doctors have not responded publicly. The case moves forward as a stark reminder that even in major institutions, the most fundamental safeguards can quietly fail — and that the person left to carry that failure is rarely the one who caused it.
Jana Petriganova DeGregoris spent seven years in pain she could not explain. She saw doctors, underwent tests, endured the slow erosion of her quality of life—all while the source of her suffering lay silently inside her body. It was not until October 2025, when a CT scan finally revealed what had been there all along, that the mystery resolved into something far worse than uncertainty: a surgical needle, nearly four centimetres long, abandoned in her abdomen.
The needle had been left behind during one of two operations performed between 2018 and 2021. The first procedure took place on June 28, 2018, when Dr. Isabel Blumberg and Dr. Philip Torina performed a caesarean section followed by plastic surgery to close the wound. Three years later, on November 17, 2021, Dr. Torina and Dr. Scott Nguyen performed an abdominoplasty—a tummy tuck—combined with a laparoscopic repair of a hernia near her umbilicus. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, does not specify which operation left the needle behind, only that one of these procedures was the site of the negligence.
The irony cuts deep. Petriganova DeGregoris has worked as a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai since 2013—the very hospital network she and her husband, Gerard, are now suing. She knows how hospitals operate. She understands the protocols that are supposed to prevent exactly this kind of oversight. Yet the system failed her, and she lived with the consequences for seven years.
The legal filing, brought by her attorney John Cagney, names Mount Sinai hospital alongside the three physicians involved. The court documents describe the needle as having been "negligently, carelessly and improperly" left inside her abdomen, resulting in what the filing characterizes as severe and serious personal injuries and prolonged physical pain. For seven years, she carried this foreign object without knowing it was there, her body's distress signals going unheeded because no one—including herself—knew what to look for.
When the CT scan finally identified the needle in October 2025, Petriganova DeGregoris required a third surgery to have it removed. The damage by then was not merely physical. Seven years of unexplained pain leaves marks that surgery cannot erase. The couple is seeking unspecified damages from the hospital and the named physicians.
Neither Mount Sinai nor the three doctors responded to requests for comment. The hospital's silence, and the lawyers' refusal to discuss the case, leaves the public record to speak for itself: a retained surgical instrument, a patient's years of suffering, and a system designed to catch such errors that somehow did not. The case now moves through the courts, a reminder that even in major medical institutions, the most basic safeguards can fail, and the cost falls on the person left holding the wound.
Citas Notables
The lawsuit claims the needle was left behind 'negligently, carelessly and improperly' during one of the operations, causing severe injuries and prolonged physical pain— Manhattan Supreme Court filing
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