Recently, the Supreme Court ordered the Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru, Karnataka to pay Rs. 10 lakh to a patient (now deceased), who developed hoarseness in his voice after a lung surgery in 2003, due to medical negligence perpetrated by a trainee doctor while administering anesthesia.
A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah cited that the Head of the Department of Anaesthesia should have been the one to administer anesthesia to the patient (now deceased) during the operation, but it was performed by a trainee anesthetic in the cardiac anesthesia department.
The patient (now deceased) claimed compensation of Rs. 18 lakh, against a faulty procedure on his left lung performed by Manipal Hospital which resulted in hoarseness in his voice. The same medical procedure resulted in paralysis of his left vocal cord due to the faulty insertion of the double-lumen tube in the course of administering anesthesia to him for undergoing the surgery.
The deceased patient was working as an area sales manager in a private firm and had also claimed that he was constrained from promotion in the job due to such illness. He continued in the same post from the year 2003 without promotion till he expired at the end of the year 2015.
The District Forum had suo moto arrived at a rough figure of 5 lakh as compensation to the appellant without stating any reasons. The compensation awarded by the District Forum is upheld by the National District Redressal Commission (NCDRC). This instigates the widow of the deceased to move to the apex court.
The Supreme Court after finding the district forum failed to provide rightful compensation to the patient, the bench of justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah stated that having regard to the fact the appellant expired during the pendency of the proceedings before the NCDRC, no useful purpose would be served in remanding the matter, directed the Manipal hospital to pay compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs with 10% simple interest to the widow of the deceased within a month.
Advocates Susmit Pushkar and Gaurav Sharma appeared for the deceased and his kin and advocates SV Joga Rao, Radha Pyari, A Yashwant Prasad, Shivam Bajaj, Ashish Choudhury, Akash Tandon, and Rohit Amit Sthalekar appeared for Manipal Hospital.
The hospital had argued that the district forum had erred in discarding the evidence of the doctors who stated that there was nothing wrong in giving anesthesia through a double-lumen tube.
The court observed while dissenting with the argument of the hospital that mere reliance on medical literature would not be sufficient to exonerate the hospital from its duty of ensuring that the head of the department, anesthesia ought to have inserted the double lumen tube. Instead, he was not available and the task was delegated to a trainee anesthetist.
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Lavanya Beeraboina/MSM)
