A woman went to a hospital for back surgery — and left without one of her kidneys

Maureen Pacheco had expected to have a spinal procedure.

It was April 2016, and she was told a surgeon would fuse together a couple of vertebrae in her lower back to help relieve pain believed to be from an injury she sustained in a car accident the previous year. However, when she woke up from surgery at Wellington Regional Medical Center in Wellington, Fla., she learned that the surgeon had done something else, according to court records.