A criminal investigation is underway after a Russian woman died from receiving embalming fluids in an intravenous drip instead of a saline solution during surgery, according to a report Sunday.
Ekaterina Fedyaeva, 27, died from the medical mistake when doctors pumped her veins with formalin, a formaldehyde-based chemical that is used to keep corpses from decomposing, the New York Post reported.
“This is pure murder,” her mother, Galina Baryshnikova, said of the botched procedure. “The formalin was simply eroding her body from inside.”
Fedyaeva was undergoing a routine surgical procedure last month at a hospital in Ulyanovsk, where the doctors administered the drip containing the chemicals.
Once the drugs passed through her veins, the woman suffered from pain and convulsions. Two days later, she fell into a coma and had to be rushed to a hospital in Moscow.
“Her legs were moving, she had convulsions, her whole body was shaking,” Baryshnikova said.” I put socks on her, then a robe, then a blanket, but she was shivering to such an extent, I can’t even describe it.”
Doctors at the Moscow hospital placed Fedyaeva on a life support machine, but her heart and lungs failed, and she died.
A doctor admitted the hospital had committed an error but did not reveal what specifically caused Fedyaeva’s condition, according to Baryshnikova.
“For 14 hours after surgery she was living with this formalin and they did nothing,” Baryshnikova said of the doctors.
Fedyaeva’s family buried her on April 7.
Authorities said they are currently conducting a criminal investigation. It is unclear why Fedyaeva was undergoing a surgical procedure in the first place.
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