Foreign

5 Japanese doctors responsible for infant’s death over-administering powerful sedative

admin
24 Jun 2021 8:02 AM GMT
5 Japanese doctors responsible for infant’s death over-administering powerful sedative
x

Five Japanese doctors have been found liable for causing the death of a two-year-old boy due to over-administering a strong sedative, the Tokyo District Court ruled on Thursday. The doctors were found to be negligent and liable to pay around 60 million yen (541,269 U.S. dollars) damages for the death they caused to the infant […]

Five Japanese doctors have been found liable for causing the death of a two-year-old boy due to over-administering a strong sedative, the Tokyo District Court ruled on Thursday.

The doctors were found to be negligent and liable to pay around 60 million yen (541,269 U.S. dollars) damages for the death they caused to the infant in 2014.

The amount fell short of the parents’ claims for damages in the region of 180 million yen (1.6 million U.S. dollars) against the five doctors.

The parents also claimed damages against two other doctors at the Tokyo Women’s Medical University Hospital, but it was rejected by the court as the hospital had already compensated the parents.

The sedative propofol was administered to the two-year-old Kosuke by the doctors following the infant undergoing neck surgery in February 2014.

The use of propofol for children who have been incubated and are on ventilators or other machines essential for their breathing is, in principle, banned in Japan.

In January, two anesthesiologists out of the seven doctors were indicted without arrest.

They were charged with negligence resulting in the boy’s death.

“Following a seven-minute procedure to remove a non-cancerous tumor in Kosuke’s neck on Feb. 18, 2014, the infant was administered large quantities of propofol while he was in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital and died three days later.

“Of the five doctors who were found to be negligent, two who were indicted and another anesthesiologist were found by Presiding Judge Satoko Otokozawa to have ‘violated their duty of care by prescribing high amounts of sedative for a long time without carefully considering the amount and the time of sedative use’,’’ the ruling stated.

Otokozawa said that the other two doctors failed to fulfill their duties to satisfactorily explain the risk of the sedative use to the parents.

Otokozawa concluded that the doctors negligence and the boy’s death were causally related.

admin

admin

    Next Story