The family of a young woman who died in 1997 after surgery on a broken jawbone is considering filing a damages suit against a Tokyo hospital, claiming she died from a mistake on the operating table, sources close to the family said Monday.
The bereaved family alleges that the Nippon Medical School Hospital in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward, where the woman was treated, concealed the actual cause of her death. They claim she died after a doctor mistakenly pierced her brain with a wire during the surgery.
But the hospital maintains the woman, who was in her 20s, died of multiple internal organ failure caused by bacterial infection and that there were no lethal mistakes during the operation.