NEW HAVEN, CT — A jury has awarded $15.1 million to a Groton woman left blind after brain surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital, finding the hospital negligent, according to a statement from her lawyers that Patch reported Wednesday, Sept. 30.
Lioudmila Pyleva, now 85, was 78 when she had surgery for a non-cancerous brain tumor at the hospital in April 2019. Her lawyers, the Bridgeport firm Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, said a toxic antiseptic solution was allowed to drip into her one working eye and stay there while she was unconscious on the operating table.
The New Haven Surgery and the Eye Injury
The lawsuit claimed a neurosurgeon mishandled two antiseptics, Hibiclens and Chloraprep. Pyleva woke up with a burning feeling in her right eye, the firm said, and an exam the same day found that close to 90 percent of the surface of her cornea had been destroyed.
She eventually lost the sight in that eye. Because her left eye had not had useful vision since she was a child, the surgery left her functionally blind, the lawyers said.