The trial of an obstetrician of a Fukushima prefectural hospital, where a 29-year-old woman died of blood loss during a Caesarean operation in December 2004, serves as a reminder that doctors' efforts to save lives sometimes lead to death. As the level of medical treatment advances and becomes more complex, the risk of medical accidents is rising.
The Fukushima District Court ruled in August that the doctor, who is with the prefectural Ono Hospital in the town of Okuma, was not guilty of professional negligence leading to death. The doctor had discovered that the placenta was firmly attached to the uterus — an extremely rare case that occurs in about one of every 10,000 deliveries. The blood loss resulted when he tried to detach the placenta from the uterus. The court acquitted him, saying he followed standard procedure. The prosecution eventually decided not to appeal the ruling probably because it believed it could not support its arguments with enough clinical data.
During the trial, the prosecution had argued that the obstetrician should have removed the uterus, instead of detaching the placenta from it. The indictment caused fear among doctors that interference by investigators in doctors' actions during medical treatment might increase nationwide. At the same time, doctors were angered by the fact that the obstetrician apparently had not erred.