Suit claiming doctor ruined pregnancy chances dismissed

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accuses a doctor of secretly inserting a device into a woman during surgery that she claims stopped her from getting pregnant.
The decision against Kimberly Bryant’s lawsuit was issued Friday by Forsyth County Judge Eric Morgan, Winston-Salem Journal reported. Bryant had filed the lawsuit against multiple parties including the doctor, Mehmet Tamer Yalcinkaya, and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for medical malpractice, fraudulent concealment and negligence regarding the incident in 2007.
That’s the year Bryant visited Yalcinkaya, who at the time was a doctor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, for a surgery to remove uterine fibroids.
Her lawsuit alleges Yalcinkaya inserted a Gore-Tex barrier, which acted as an IUD birth-control device, during the surgery without her knowledge. Bryant said she found out about it 10 years later when the device split, which led her to have an emergency surgery.
Yalcinkaya has denied the allegations, saying that he informed both Bryant and her husband about the device and mentioned it in the post-operation notes.
Bryant and her husband have denied Yalcinkaya told them, but the judge said in his decision that the existence of the device on the post-operation note “directly contradicts any inference that an attempt at concealment was made.”
The judge also sided with Yalcinkaya on his claim that the device was inserted for therapeutic purposes. Steven McCarus, a medical expert for the plaintiff, had said there was no medical reason for it.
Bryant was told to undergo a hysterectomy after the emergency surgery in 2017. She said in her affidavit that she had to go to therapy for several years after finding out she could not have children. Her lawsuit had sought nearly $10 million in damages.
“Ms. Bryant strongly disagrees with the Court’s ruling,” her attorneys said in the statement Monday. “We will appeal the decision to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.”