CNN's Sanjay Gupta questioned on Nepalese surgery

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN said today that it is working to verify the identity of the Nepalese patient operated on this spring by its medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, after a published report that said Gupta mistakenly told viewers he had treated someone else.

Gupta, a practicing brain surgeon, operated on a girl on April 27 at Kathmandu's Bir Hospital shortly after he had been sent to Nepal to cover the aftermath of a deadly earthquake there. In a video report that day, Gupta identified the patient as 8-year-old Salina Dahal and said she needed emergency surgery because of a fractured skull, blood clot and swelling of the brain.

The Global Press Journal reported this week that according to the girl's family and doctors, Dahal was never operated on. Instead, Gupta operated on a 14-year-old girl, Sandhya Chalise.

Gupta, speaking on CNN on Wednesday, said the hospital's triage unit was a chaotic situation that was "unlike anything I've ever seen." He had relied upon the hospital to identify his patient and CNN acknowledged the hospital may have provided him with incorrect information.

Asked how Gupta might have mistaken the girl on a stretcher in his report for the person he operated upon, CNN spokeswoman Neel Khairzada noted that it was brain surgery, and the rest of the patient's body was obscured by drapes.