Investigators in Russia are probing the death of a woman who died after doctors wrongfully embalmed her alive in what has been described as a horrific ‘medical blunder’.
Ekaterina Fedyaeva, 27, was mistakenly put on formalin drip – a solution containing formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde is a substance used to preserve corpses and prevent them from decomposing.
Doctors were only supposed to put her on a saline solution during a routine surgery at a hospital in her home city of Ulyanovsk.
Her mother Galina Baryshnikova termed the death which robbed her of her only child as “pure murder”.
Ekaterina died after suffering excruciating pain and convulsions for two days before falling into a coma.
Medics used 52 drugs in a desperate attempt to save her after they realized their mistake.
She was put on a life support machine after she was flown to Moscow but she suffered multiple organ failure and died.
Galina and Ekaterina’s husband Igor were with her in her ward when she came round from the surgery.
Galina said her daughter had convulsions and her body was shaking terribly even after she heavily covered her with a blanket.
She said she also suffered chronic stomach pains and vomiting.
“We had no idea it was formalin. Now I understand that formalin was simply eroding her body from inside,” Galina said.
She said she begged doctors to help her daughter but they told her to go home and give her hot soup.
“I think they just wanted me to go away and to hide everything,” Galina said, adding that the doctors discovered their mistake but they did nothing to help.
Galina said her daughter was rushed to intensive care 14 hours after surgery when her condition deteriorated.
She said she went in search of doctors and found them in a room discussing how to break the shocking news to her and her husband.
The grieving mother said the chief doctor simply told her a mistake had occurred during surgery and that her daughter’s heart, lungs and liver had stopped functioning.
She said they were later informed about the actual blunder which investigators categorized as negligence.
“But this is pure murder,” Galina said. Agencies
