Two doctors have been charged with bodily injury caused by negligence, after a 90-year-old Austrian woman had her wrong leg amputated over the summer, prosecutors in Innsbruck announced on Tuesday.
The operating surgeon and a second doctor, who allegedly made the mistake when planning the operation, are expected to go on trial in November.
The now 91-year-old woman, who suffered from vascular disease, had gone into hospital in the Tyrolean town of Sankt Johann on June 16 to have a leg amputated.
After the procedure however, the doctors realised they had removed the wrong limb.
The hospital said human error as well as a breakdown in safety measures were to blame for the mistake, and the surgeon who handled the procedure was suspended after 25 years on the job.
The elderly woman finally had the correct limb amputated in a second operation a few days later.