Boy’s Eye Gets Glued Shut During Botched Medical Procedure

A medical procedure went horribly wrong at a Canadian clinic when a young boy had his eye glued shut by a receptionist.

According to the Huffington Post, Julia Vavatsikos brought her son Vinnie to a private medical clinic called LeBlanc & Savaria in Blainville, Quebec, after his eye was scratched by the family’s pet cat. Due to the Canada Day national holiday, the clinic only had one doctor available and was short-staffed, which resulted in the poor child having his eye glued shut on accident.

Dr. Jean Therrien informed the mother that Vinnie would need the scratch mended with medical glue. This “skin-glue” is often used by medical professionals to adhere the edges of a wound as a more delicate alternative to stitches or metal staples. Julia Vavatsikos never thought the simple procedure would result in her son having his eye glued shut. But Dr. Therrien didn’t perform the procedure himself, he asked for the help of a staff member.

“I thought… that he was either a nurse or medical student,” Vavatsikos explained to CBC. “The doctor was holding my son and kind of holding his eye and then the co-worker applied glue. He kind of missed and he glued my son’s eye shut.”

The man was apparently the receptionist for the clinic and had no medical background or experience. Vavatsikos said that both she and her son had a brief moment of panic after he had his eye glued shut.

“I thought I was going to faint. I got emotional, I got scared. I was angry. I didn’t know what to do. My son was screaming he was trying to open his eye … it was very, very, scary… My son was yelling, ‘Mommy, mommy.’ He couldn’t open his eye and also the doctor looked like he was panicking. He was trying to open my son’s eye with water and his fingers, he was even swearing at that point. I’ve never met any doctors that swear. At that point, I knew something was really wrong.”

One of the clinic’s owners, Dr. Marie-Andrée LeBlanc, defended the receptionist by blaming Vinnie for the accident, saying the boy made a sudden movement when the adhesive was applied, thus getting his own eye glued shut.

Julia rushed her son to the emergency room, where a nurse informed her that medical glue shouldn’t have been used near the child’s eye or treated by anyone other than a specialist.

“[She] couldn’t believe it,” said Vavatsikos. “She said, first of all, they try to avoid using glue because things like this could happen, especially on places like an eye.”

Vinnie has since been treated by an ophthalmologist who had to separate the child’s eyelids by cutting the lashes. Fortunately, the boy did not suffer any loss of vision from having his eye glued shut, but Julie Vavatsikos did file a complaint against the clinic. They have since refunded the $150 bill.

What would you do if your child had his or her eye glued shut?

[Image credit: Julia Vavatsikos]