A Mount Sinai nurse practitioner says she spent seven years in unexplained agony because surgeons left a roughly 1.5-inch needle inside her abdomen during one of two surgeries she underwent, only discovering the foreign object last year during a CT scan. Jana Petriganova DeGregoris has now sued the hospital and three of its doctors in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleging the tool was left behind during one of two surgeries she underwent at the Upper East Side medical center.
DeGregoris, who according to her LinkedIn profile has worked as a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai since 2013, filed the suit on September 24 along with her husband, Gerard DeGregoris, as reported by the New York Post. The complaint names Mount Sinai along with Drs. Isabel Blumberg, Philip Torina, and Scott Nguyen, seeking an unspecified amount of damages for what the couple describes as severe physical pain and serious personal injuries.
The lawsuit alleges the needle was left during one of two operations: a June 28, 2018, C-section performed by Blumberg and Torina, or a November 17, 2021, abdominoplasty with laparoscopic umbilical hernia repair performed by Nguyen and Torina, according to the Post's report. Three years later, on November 17, 2021, Nguyen and Torina performed a separate abdominoplasty with laparoscopic umbilical hernia repair on DeGregoris — meaning two different surgical teams and two different procedures are now in question as to which one left the object behind.
A Scan Finally Reveals the Hidden Object
It wasn't until October 14, 2025 that DeGregoris learned about the foreign object during a CT scan, the lawsuit states. She underwent another surgery later to remove it. Torina, one of the named defendants, completed his surgical residency at Mount Sinai and specializes in plastic and reconstructive surgery, according to his Mount Sinai Health System profile. Nguyen serves as an associate director of Mount Sinai's Surgical Simulation and Education Center and specializes in minimally invasive abdominal surgery, per the same health system profile.
Mount Sinai did not return a request for comment, nor did Blumberg, Torina, or Nguyen, according to the Post's account. John Cagney, the couple's attorney, declined to comment when reached. The hospital is located on Madison Avenue and 98th Street in Upper Manhattan.
Why a Seven-Year-Old Case Can Still Go to Court
New York medical malpractice claims normally carry a two-and-a-half-year statute of limitations, but a specific carve-out in state law changes the math for cases like this one. Under CPLR § 214-a, a statutory foreign object discovery rule lets patients sue within one year of discovering an inadvertently left surgical item, no matter how much time has passed since the procedure.
That exception has deep roots in New York law. It was first established by the state's Court of Appeals in the 1969 decision Flanagan v. Mount Eden General Hospital before state lawmakers formally wrote it into statute in 1975, according to research published in the St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. The carve-out applies strictly to items inadvertently left behind during a procedure, explicitly excluding chemical compounds, fixation devices, and intentionally placed implants under the statute's own language.
A Persistent Problem in Operating Rooms Nationwide
Retained surgical items remain a stubborn national safety issue. Unintended retention of foreign objects rose to 119 reported sentinel events submitted to The Joint Commission in 2024, up from 110 the year before, according to data compiled by the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses and published by Outpatient Surgery Magazine.
Retained surgical items remain a concern in operating rooms. Retained foreign objects are often called “never events.”
DeGregoris says she endured persistent, unexplained pain for years before the object was found.
