She was 20 weeks pregnant but she died after doctors removed her ovary rather than her appendix.

She was 20-weeks pregnant with her fourth child.

What she thought would be a routine operation instead killed her and her baby boy.

An inquest in the UK is hearing the case of Mother-of-three Maria De Jesus, a 32-year old woman who died in 2011 after a trainee surgeon removed her ovary instead of her appendix.

According to the UK’s Daily Mail Maria De Jesus then went on to give birth to a stillborn baby 19 days later. She died from organ failure due to septicemia.

The ‘fitness to practise’ proceedings at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service is currently investigating the case of the doctors involved, a fifth-year trainee surgeon, Yahya Al-Abed and his supervisor, Dr. Babatunde Coker.

It was October 2011 and Maria De Jesus needed to have her appendix removed. She went into hospital to undergo the procedure. A trainee surgeon on duty, Dr. Yahya Al-Abed, removed what he thought was her appendix.

It was a colossal mistake.

According to the UK Telegraph Dr Yaha Al-Abed had only been at the hospital for three weeks. During the surgery an even more inexperienced Doctor on his third week only into training was allowed to make the incision. But things began to get complicated and Mr Al-Abed took over.

“Patient A had begun to bleed quite heavily. Something was not right,” Mr Horgan said. “In the midst of this, Mr Al-Abed removed what he clearly believed to be the appendix. He thought he found it, removed it and gave to a nurse what later turned out to be Patient A’s ovary.”

The supervising Doctor, Dr. Babatunde Coker was in the coffee room at the time, he not only was never summonsed, he wasn’t aware in the first place the surgery was taking place.

Maria was then discharged from hospital a few days later – no-one knowing her right ovary had been removed.

She continued to suffer abdominal pains and returned to hospital a few days later only for her admitting Doctor to realise that she actually still had her appendix.

The wrong organ had been removed.

The admitting Doctor, Dr Sunita Sharma told the inquest that she had been “puzzled” about the patient’s condition and decided to look through her pathology results. “It didn’t make sense that a healthy young woman with appendicitis wasn’t recovering after the appendix had been removed. I looked at the results and it showed that her ovary had been removed and not her appendix. I could not believe it. I was shocked.”

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal, who referred to Maria as patient A  heard. “”Tragically on November 11 Patient A gave birth to a still-born male baby.”

She then gave her consent to have the appendix removed, but in a tragic turn of events she did not survive the surgery and died whilst on the operating table. The post-mortem concluded she had died of multiple organ failure brought on by septicemia, the panel heard.

The hearing into the Doctors continues.