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Abby Lee Miller is suing Cedars-Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital for alleged medical malpractice.
Miller, 59, alleges that the hospital left a catheter in her body for years after performing life-saving spinal surgery in 2020. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, June 3, was first reported by TMZ.
According to the legal documents obtained by PEOPLE, the Dance Moms alum allegedly began suffering from abdominal pain and discomfort following the otherwise successful surgery. She claimed she told her medical team about the pain, including the two doctors who performed her surgery.
Miller alleged her complaints were largely ignored until a doctor performed a CT scan, which allegedly revealed a retained catheter inside her body, in June 2024. The scan “confirmed the presence of the foreign object,” per the lawsuit. That same day, doctors “performed an emergency procedure to remove the item, which was identified as a retained catheter left inside Plaintiff’s body from the prior surgeries,” the lawsuit reads.
The documents define a “retained surgical object” as “foreign material accidentally left inside a patient’s body during surgery.” The introduction to the complaint continued, “It’s estimated that 1 in 5,500 surgeries will result in a patient with a retained surgical object.”
She is now suing the hospital for medical negligence, professional negligence, medical battery and more. She is seeking $1.4 million in damages.
“Abby Lee Miller suffered for years from an object left inside of her during spinal surgery; despite complaints to various physicians, not one ordered imaging of any kind to diagnose the source of her pain,” Miller’s attorney, Nadine Lewis, said in a statement to PEOPLE, echoing claims made in the complaint. “Rather, they systemically dismissed her chronic pain and let her suffer for years.”
“As a paraplegic woman with a life sentence in a wheelchair, Abby lives with daily pain in the aftermath of her Burkitt Lymphoma diagnosis,” Lewis went on to say, reiterating allegations in the complaint. “For years, Abby complained of abdominal pain, only to be ignored by her most trusted physicians. Four years post-surgery Abby discovered that her surgeons had left a bright blue catheter inside of her abdomen.”
“Cedars-Sinai cannot comment on pending legal matters,” the hospital said in a statement to PEOPLE. “Also, due to federal and state privacy laws, Cedars-Sinai cannot discuss any patient’s medical treatment.”
“However, the care and safety of our patients, staff and visitors are always Cedars-Sinai’s top priorities,” the statement continued. “We are dedicated to ensuring that we meet the highest standards of care for all those we serve.”
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The reality star has been battling health issues since 2018, when she was initially thought to have a severe spinal infection. Doctors later diagnosed Miller with Burkitt lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that develops in the lymphatic system.
One of Miller’s doctors, Dr, Hooman M. Melamed, previously told PEOPLE in 2018, “It was not an infection, it was a type of a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – it’s a type of a cancer.”
Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Cedar Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital who once treated Miller, said, “We’re getting an oncologist involved and we have to figure out what the next steps are as far as chemotherapy or radiation or more spine surgery. Depending on the tumor type, depending on the sensitivity of the tumor – it just depends the type but I feel more than yes, she will undergo chemotherapy or radiation.”
Melamed is named as one of the defendants in the new lawsuit. When reached for comment on Wednesday, June 4, a representative for Melamed said, “No comment.”
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The diagnosis came a year after Miller received a sentence of one year and one day in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release for bankruptcy fraud. She was additionally fined $40,000 and ordered to pay the $120,000 judgment, as well as give a DNA sample relating to her felony charge. She was sentenced in 2017.
Miller starred on Lifetime’s Dance Moms from 2011 to 2019. At the time, she served as the director of Reign Dance Productions in Pittsburgh.
