Family in shock as 33-year-old dies after sinus surgery

Dubai

The family of a young man is in shock after he died at a private hospital in Sharjah following a sinus surgery this week. Sharjah Police have registered a case.

Pakistani expatriate Tassadque Ali Baig, 33, a banker who was between two jobs, decided to make good use of his leave to undergo a sinus surgery as his blocked sinuses had been troubling him for long, his family said on Wednesday.

He consulted Dr Charanjeet Singh Notay, a specialist ENT surgeon At Zulekha Hospital, Sharjah, who informed him that this was a simple 30-minute procedure. Baig got himself admitted to the hospital at about 11am on January 17. His wife, who thought it was not a high-risk surgery, decided to utilise the time to get her three-year-old son vaccinated at a government hospital, hoping to be back in time after the procedure was carried out.

She returned to Zulekha hospital at about 1pm but could not get any information about her husband. Frantic, she requested her father who lived in Abu Dhabi to find out and after 2.30pm, she was informed that her husband’s condition was critical and that he was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). No explanation was given to the family as to how his condition turned critical. Baig died at 4pm.

The death certificate issued by Zulekha Hospital states the immediate cause of death to be ‘Cardio Pulmonary Arrest’ and also mentions the leading and actual cause of death to be ‘unknown’. It also mentions in the section ‘Other significant causes’ as ‘operated for sinus surgery’.

The family is now trying to get possession of the body to perform the last rites in his hometown Karachi. They have been told that the body will be released after the autopsy.

A spokesperson from the Wasit Police Station in Sharjah said a police case has been filed and the case has been referred to public prosecution, which is investigating the incident.

Baig, a father of two — an eight-year-old girl and three-year-old boy — was looking forward to a new job in a bank and the family had never been happier. A close family member who declined to be named said they had filed a case with Sharjah Police. “Tassadque was healthy, had no issues, but thought he could get rid of frequent nose blocks with this minor surgery as he had three to four days leave before he joined the new job. He was absolutely healthy and when we got to see his body it was evident that he had bled profusely. We are shocked as the hospital authorities were most indifferent and unsympathetic to our plight offering no explanation on this. His wife is in shock and the whole family is suffering. It is going to take a while for the body to be released. All we want is to take him to Pakistan among his loved ones and bury him there.”

Dr Chandrashekhar Jadhav, Director Administration of Zulekha Hospital told Gulf News: “No error was made by our team of doctors. The authorities are investigating the case and will conduct their autopsy. I think we would like to honour their investigation and not make any comments now.”

Can sinus surgery be fatal?

The sinuses are a connected system of hollow cavities in the skull. Sinus surgery eliminates diseased or obstructive sinus tissue resulting in improved natural sinus drainage.

An internal medicine specialist from a leading hospital group in Dubai said that it was extremely rare for a patient to die due to sinus surgery. “Usually, patients are either operated on the frontal sinus or the Ethmiodal (situated near the bridge of the nose), which are a set of four paired paranasal sinuses (surrounding the nasal cavity).

“Complications while operating on the frontal sinuses (above the eyes) could be the penetration of a bone that is connected to the brain due to which there could be a leakage of brain fluid, causing further complications. But in this situation, death is not so imminent. Ethmoid sinuses are adjacent to the cavernous sinuses, situated at the base of the brain, which drain deoxygenated blood from the brain back to the heart.

“Sometimes, a damage to the cavernous sinus can result in a blood clot that travels to the brain,” the specialist added. In addition to these complications, when you are doing surgery, there is the usual risk of clots getting dislodged, for example, from the artery in the thigh and travelling to the brain, he said.

“Usually before a sinus surgery there are two evaluations the surgeon gets done. First, a cardiac clearance but this is normally done in case of a patient being over 40 and in this case the doctor may not have carried out cardiac clearance as the patient was 33.

“The second would be a pre-anaesthetic check-up that would include an ECG and pulmonary check-up to see if the patient could hold up to anaesthesia well.

“Death in case of sinus surgery is very rare.”

— With inputs from Aghaddir Ali, Staff Reporter