Doctor Michael Lifschitz failed to remove a throat pack, a swab used in oral surgery patients to absorb fluid in the mouth, from his 60-year-old patient in August 2009.
A few months later, the anaesthesiologist with 40 years' experience retired.
The Limpopo woman who had travelled to Sunward Park Hospital in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, for a dentectomy to remove her front teeth, said yesterday: "I thought he was too old to practise."
The patient, who spoke on condition of anonymity, woke up in the recovery ward and immediately realised something was wrong.
"I couldn't breathe. My husband and child were praying for me. As the nurses pushed me into the passage, I threw it [the swab] up into my hand."
Lifschitz pleaded guilty of failing to remove the swab.
In his plea explanation, Lifschitz said that after the operation he had looked for the swab in the patient's mouth five times and could not find it. Lifschitz declined to comment on the verbal reprimand he received from the Health Professions Council of South Africa yesterday.
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