A Sydney man is suing a hospital he claims sent him blind in one eye after a routine procedure left him "screaming, crying and in unbearable pain".
Giovanni Busa, 58, is suing the Sydney Eye Hospital (SEH) over the 2015 "tap and inject" assessment, which was intended to test his left eye for an infection.
The procedure typically consists of up to three injections, but Mr Busa, who is diabetic, claims he received up to seven before being wheeled into an operating theatre for emergency surgery.
"I started screaming and crying," he told the ABC.
"I started screaming and screaming for my sister to come in ... and I just told her, 'Just kill me, kill me'.
"The pain was unbearable."
In proceedings filed to the NSW Supreme Court, Mr Busa is seeking compensation for negligence and also claims the procedure was not recorded in his medical files.
SEH is yet to file a defence in the proceedings and in a statement a spokeswoman told the ABC the hospital "regrets the distress the experience caused Mr Busa" over the handling of his complaints.
She said senior staff met Mr Busa, who lives in Padstow, south-west Sydney, several times to discuss his concerns.
Three years after the ordeal, the hospital's general manager Tobi Wilson wrote to Mr Busa, explaining the registrar who performed the tap and inject acknowledged that he "did not complete contemporaneous medical documentation of the procedure" on his medical record.
He said this was an "oversight" but that it was not deliberate.
Mr Wilson was not involved in treating Mr Busa.
"Please accept an apology on behalf of the hospital that the events on this day were not escalated at the time of the procedure and that you felt that the communication you received during this time caused further distress to you and your family," he wrote.
But Mr Busa does not accept that explanation.
"I know I'm a diabetic but what happened to me that day — I saw my eye explode in front of me — that's the only way I can describe it," he said.
"How can somebody forget to write notes when something drastic and traumatic has happened to me?"
The matter was then referred to the Health Care and Complaints Commission (HCCC) which recommended the hospital review its procedures but found no issues of clinical concern.
Mr Busa said he only began questioning the procedures in the hospital after suffering other complications with his right eye following laser surgery the next year and after discovering what he says is a gap in his medical notes.
While he has a history of issues involving his left retina, he claims what happened in hospital that day left him blind in the eye.
Solicitors he has approached have been unwilling to take up his claim because there are no records detailing the tap and inject procedure.
He has now launched his own action.
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