Family of paralyzed teen sues Mayo Clinic over back surgery

A Grand Forks, N.D., family is accusing Mayo Clinic and two surgeons of permanently paralyzing their teenager from the waist down by failing to protect her spinal cord during a series of corrective back surgeries.

Kyla Barton was a competitive travel softball player, but now the 14-year-old can’t move her legs and her daily schedule is structured around her use of a catheter to empty her bladder. Her parents said they sued Mayo because their daughter faces a lifetime of costly medical care and support, and nobody else should suffer her pain and anguish.

“When we left Mayo, the only thing she could really do was sit up at the bed with four people assisting her,” said her mother, Ashley Barton.

Kyla Barton had a grapefruit-sized tumor removed that had been pressing on her spine and causing an abnormal curvature called scoliosis. The central question in the lawsuit, filed this month in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, is whether Mayo’s doctors failed to take precautions amid three procedures in February 2024 to remove the benign growth and straighten her spine. The lawsuit claims Mayo and its doctors owe an amount “far exceeding $75,000,” a minimum threshold for filing the case in federal court.

Some bone and tissue was removed along with the tumor in the first two surgeries, weakening the spine and jeopardizing the spinal nerves that carry signals from the brain to her lower body, said Dr. James Lowe, a Philadelphia attorney and former neurosurgeon who is representing the family along with Minneapolis attorney Jeff Storms. The doctors should have temporarily stabilized her weakened spine by inserting metal rods and screws, keeping her in a protective brace, or restricting her to bed rest, Lowe said.

None of these measures were taken when the doctors urged Barton to get up and move around in advance of the third procedure, he said. “The doctors failed to recognize that her spinal cord was in danger because of gross instability. ... They should have known she was at risk.”

Mayo said in a statement that the complaint is inaccurate and that the health system “will prove in court” that Barton’s care was “thoughtful and appropriate.”

“Unfortunately, the risk of paralysis is a known complication in complex spinal tumor surgeries even when the care team is among the most experienced in the world,” the health system stated. Patient privacy protections prevented Mayo from discussing Barton’s care specifically, but the health system said it strives “to provide hope and healing to our patients.”

The defendants in the lawsuit include Dr. Peter Rose and Dr. Mohammed Karim, who hold fellowships in spine surgery and have collectively published more than 500 research articles on surgeries and cancer treatments. Rochester-based Mayo is Minnesota’s largest employer and treats more than 1 million patients, annually, when including its campuses in Arizona and Florida.

Barton’s mother is a neurosurgery nurse. She said she is haunted by the experience, recalling the pain her daughter felt after the first attempt post-surgery to stand. The daughter likened the pain to jumping from a warm sauna and getting stuck in freezing snow.

“‘Why are you doing this to me? Why is nobody helping me?’” she recalled her daughter shouting. “And that lasted about eight hours.”

Barton recovered after she lay back down, but her mother said the warning went unheeded. Her doctors wanted her to get up and show mobility before the third surgery, so she tried again two days later. After sitting up, Barton said she could no longer move her legs and that all feeling below her waist had disappeared.

Attorney Lowe said it was “completely understandable” that the doctors wanted Barton to move before the next surgery, because patients can suffer infections and blood clots if they remain stagnant. However, he said the priority is protecting the spinal cord, and that there were imaging scans and other forms of evidence suggesting that Barton’s was at risk.

Imaging scans after Barton’s second, paralyzing episode discovered stenosis, or a compression of the spine that was disrupting her spinal nerves, according to the lawsuit. She underwent emergency surgery, and then her regularly scheduled procedure to address the scoliosis a few days later, but didn’t get feeling or movement back.

The parents pulled Barton from Mayo a few days later and alternated taking her to a rehab facility in Chicago, where she built upper body strength, learned how to prevent pressure sores from developing on her immobile lower body, and practiced transferring herself from a bed to her chair. The family sold their house and moved for now to a wheelchair-accessible apartment.

The Bartons are grateful for the support from friends and family, and the accommodations that have allowed their daughter to return to middle school as an eighth-grader. She missed six months of school but still managed to make the B honor roll last semester, her mother said.

Barton is dealing with the emotional scars of her injury, along with her twin sister, who sometimes feels guilt over what she is still able to do, their mother said.

Barton started going to softball games again to watch her old teammates, and her sister sets up softballs on a tee for her so she can take some swings. She was always a problem-solver and peacemaker, her mother said, and now she is talking about using her experience to become a child life specialist as an adult and help children cope with trauma and injuries.

“I just don’t want this to happen to someone else,” she told her mother.