Breaking: Atlanta hospital allegedly loses 28-square-inch chunk of man’s skull — and bills him $19K for replacement: lawsuit… See more

What a headache.

A Georgia man is suing an Atlanta hospital after staff allegedly lost a nearly 28-square-inch piece of his skull after a routine procedure — and then billed him for a synthetic replacement when they couldn’t find it.

Fernando Cluster checked in to Emory University Hospital Midtown in September 2022 for an intracerebral hemorrhage — commonly known as a brain bleed — and doctors determined a 4.7-by-6 inch piece of his skull needed to be removed to reduce pressure, according to an Aug. 8 complaint obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But after returning to the hospital two months later to have the piece of skull replaced, the hospital couldn’t find it amidst a pile of other unidentified bone fragments from other patients’ bodies.

We inspected the freezer where bone flaps are stored and could not find a bone flap with Mr. Cluster’s patient identification,” a note left by hospital staff in Cluster’s medical file read. “There were several bone flaps with incomplete or missing patient identification, but we could not be certain which if any of these belonged to Mr. Cluster.”