Russian Woman Dies After Being Embalmed Alive

A Russian woman has died due to medical malpractice of hospital staff who embalmed her alive.

Ekaterina Fedyaeva, who was 27 years old, was scheduled for a routine surgery when medics gave her a formalin drip instead of saline solution. The drip contained formaldehyde which is the main proponent used to embalm the dead as it keeps the body from decomposing.

The victim suffered convulsions and immense pain before falling into a coma for two days. Her mother, Galina Baryshnikova, expressed that her daughter’s body was shaking violently and that she was suffering.

Ekaterina was attached to a life support machine but the formalin had caused multiple organs to fail.

She was transported to another hospital where she briefly awoke from her coma, but doctors couldn’t save her as the drip had caused irreparable damage to her organs.

Fedyaeva’s mother begged doctors to help her daughter but was advised to go home. “People who performed the surgery already knew that they infused something wrong. They needed to take some urgent measures – but they did nothing,” her mother said.

Doctors did not know how to tell the family that a medical mistake took place. A female doctor eventually told the victim’s mother that it wasn’t normal saline they had put into the drip, but formalin.

Ekaterina was buried on April 7 and the hospital and its staff are undergoing criminal investigation.