Anesthesiologist Found Guilty over 2014 Death of Boy

Tokyo, May 29 (Jiji Press)–Tokyo District Court on Friday found one anesthesiologist guilty and another not guilty over the death of a 2-year-old boy at Tokyo Women’s Medical University Hospital in 2014. Presiding Judge Yasunobu Hosoya sentenced Toru Kotani, 66, to a year and six months in prison, suspended for three years, for professional negligence resulting in death, while acquitting Satoshi Fukuda, 44. Both defendants had pleaded not guilty. Kotani’s defense plans to appeal the ruling. Kotani and Fukuda were responsible for postoperative care at the hospital’s intensive care unit at the time of the incident. The trial centered on the causal relationship between the use of propofol, an intravenous anesthetic, and the boy’s death, as well as whether the defendants breached their duty of care by failing to cease administering the medication when the boy’s condition worsened. In court hearings, prosecutors noted that propofol was not supposed to be administered to children on artificial respirators due to its risk of fatal side effects and that many anesthesiologists were “highly cautious about the dosage and timing whenever they had to administer it.” But the defendants carelessly administered propofol for about 70 hours at roughly three times the dosage believed to increase risks, they alleged. On the other hand, the defense argued that many medical institutions were using the anesthetic on children at the time and that there was no established standard dosage. It also said no care duty violation had been detected. Acknowledging the causal relationship and the fatal side effect risk, the judge pointed out that at the time there was a medical standard calling for not using a high dose of propofol or using it for many hours. “Kotani should have stopped administering the medication when he detected an abnormal electrocardiogram pattern two days after surgery,” he said. “The degree of his care duty violation is very large.” Meanwhile, the judge noted that Fukuda was not in the position of being informed about the dangerous propofol dose level and that it is “reasonably doubtful” that he was able to predict the boy’s death. According to the indictment, Kotani and Fukuda administered propofol to the boy after a neck lymphangioma operation and failed to take appropriate steps, such as stopping using it, when his condition deteriorated, bringing about the patient’s death of acute circulatory failure three days after the operation. Hiroshi Ichikawa, deputy prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, said the office will respond to the ruling after studying it well. In a damages lawsuit filed with the same court by the boy’s parents against seven anesthesiologists and surgeons in total, the criminal defendants and three others were found in 2021 to have carelessly administered a massive dose of propofol and caused the boy’s death. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]