Two-year-old boy left infertile after doctors operate on wrong testicle: 'They castrated him'

‘They broke my heart and they basically destroyed his future,’ mother says

A two-year-old boy has been left infertile after surgeons at a British hospital operated on the wrong testicle.

The toddler was admitted to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children earlier this week to correct an undescended testicle, a condition doctors said could be treated with “minimal risk”.

But the child’s father told the BBC that doctors had “castrated him” after the procedure went wrong.

The University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust apologised and said it had launched an investigation.

The boy’s father, who has not been named to protect his son’s identity, said his son’s undescended testicle was discovered during a routine checkup.

The toddler was referred to a specialist and on Monday he was booked in at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children for an operation scheduled to last about 30 minutes.

The family said they were told it was “just a minimal operation” with “minimal risk”.

“We were waiting and waiting,” his father told the BBC. “After two and a half hours the manager, surgeons and consultants they came and I knew something was not right.

“Me and my wife started panicking, they called us into the office and told us things didn’t go right and the operation wasn’t a success.”

The couple were told a surgeon had mistakenly inserted a camera “into the wrong side” and now their son’s healthy testicle would “never work”.

“I was very distressed, it was an awful disaster for a simple operation. They destroyed everything and they ruined my son,” his father said.

“They castrated him and now my son’s future life has dramatically changed.”

The boy’s mother said what surgeons had done was “absolutely horrible”.

“They broke my heart and they basically destroyed his future,” she said. “I can’t find the words to explain how I’m feeling – there are no words. Even tears, I have no more tears.

“We just hope for a miracle, this is what we hope.”

In a statement, the trust’s medical director William Oldfield said: “On behalf of the trust, I am deeply sorry that a serious incident has occurred in the treatment of a young child in our care and would like to offer our sincerest apologies.

“As soon as our staff realised what had happened they met with the family to offer their apologies and explain what had happened.

“We take patient safety and standards of clinical care very seriously and have begun a thorough investigation into this matter and will work with the family throughout this process.

“I would again like to offer my apologies to the family for this incident.”

Undescended testicles are a relatively common childhood condition in which one or both of a boy’s testes are not in the usual place.

About one in 25 boys are born with the condition, which corrects itself in most cases. About one in 100 require treatment, according to the NHS.