An engineer has described his shock at waking up in hospital to find surgeons had operated on the wrong arm.
Simon Savage went into theatre at Rotherham General Hospital with arrows drawn on him to indicate where tendon material should be taken from his right wrist and used to fix his injured left elbow.
But surgeons performed the procedure on the 26-year-old the other way around - operating on his healthy right arm.
Mr Savage told the Rotherham Advertiser he could not believe it when he woke up to see a plaster on the wrong arm.
"I shouted to the nurse 'I think he's operated on the wrong arm'," he said.
Mr Savage, from the Brinsworth area of Rotherham, added: "I've been left with one arm that's still injured and another that is in a pot and completely useless."
He now thinks he might be off work for months.
Hospital chief of surgery Roger Jones admitted a mistake had been made and said an investigation had already begun into the "serious incident".
Mr Jones stressed such mistakes were extremely rare.
He added
:"We offer our sincere apologies for the distress that this matter has caused the patient and his family."
Well that's ok then. These things happen I suppose. 