SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When one woman went to the hospital to have her gallbladder removed, she had no idea something else would unexpectedly be left behind. Yet this is exactly what Darlene Larabie claims happened to her at Stanton Territorial Hospital in the early 1990s.

According to documents filed with the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, a small metal surgical clip was accidentally left inside Larabie's body following a cholecystectomy - the surgical removal of the gallbladder as a treatment for gallstones. Larabie is suing Stanton Territorial Hospital and the three surgeons involved in her treatment.

She alleges that in May 1996 - approximately three years after her gallbladder surgery - she began to experience continued hip pain. She was diagnosed with lower back strain and advised to increase her physical activity.

This pain allegedly continued over the next 15 years, during which time Larabie - who no longer resides in Yellowknife - sought treatment from various physicians and hospitals until in 2011 an ultrasound in Edmonton revealed "the presence of a surgical clip in the upper right quadrant of her lumbar spine left from the cholecystectomy."

In her statement of claim, she says that the hospital "failed to maintain adequate care, attention, and supervision" and that the hospital allowed doctors to perform surgery "when they ought to have known that such operative and post-operative treatment was beyond their expertise."

Larabie's claims have not been proven in court.

One of the accused surgeons has formally denied the allegations in a statement of defence filed with the court.

"This defendant denies that her respective treatment and medical services provided to the plaintiff fell below the standard of care required," states the court document, which goes on to assert that Larabie has also waited too long before commencing legal action.

The statement goes on to add the accused surgeon "says that if the plaintiff did suffer injuries or losses, which is denied, such injuries or losses are excessive, exaggerated and too remote."

Of the other two doctors accused in the suit, one died in 2006 and the third has not issued any statement of defence.

Damien Healy, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Services, did not provide information on the case.

"The matter is active before the courts and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment," he stated in an e-mail.

The case is scheduled to go before the NWT Supreme Court on Nov. 25.