(II) Misadventure Is Mischance, Accident or Disaster. It Is of Three Types
(II) Misadventure Is Mischance, Accident or Disaster. It Is of Three Types
(II) Misadventure Is Mischance, Accident or Disaster. It Is of Three Types
Ans).
(I) Definition: Therapeutic Misadventure is a case in which an individual has been injured or had
died due to some unintentional/ inadvertent act by doctor or his agent or hospital (somewhat similar
to medical maloccurrence) without negligence or intent to harm. In Therapeutic Misadventure, the
injury or an adverse event is caused by medical management rather than by an underlying disease.
Therapeutic misadventure is one of the three types of Medical misadventure
(III) Therapeutic misadventure includes medication errors, medical and surgical errors, surgical
complications, iatrogenic or nosocomial infections, or postoperative complications.
(3) Electric equipment, hot water pads, and heating pads may produce burns.
(4) Blood transfusion may cause serious or fatal complications from bleeding resulting from haemolytic
reaction due to hypofibrinogenaemia, hypothrombinaemia and thrombocytopaenia. Other
complications are haemosiderosis, viral hepatitis, hyperkalaemia and hypocalcaemia.
(5) Radiological procedures used for diagnostic purposes may prove fatal, e.g., poisoning by barium
enema, traumatic rupture of the rectum and chemical peritonitis during barium enema.
(6) Foetal and neonatal deaths in utero may occur from drugs administered to the mother during
pregnancy, e.g., dicumarol, diabenese, serpasil, iodides, synthetic vitamin K, thiazide diuretics, etc.
1) It is a known fact that almost every therapeutic drug and every therapeutic procedure can cause
death.
2) A doctor would not be held responsible for harm caused to the patient by adverse reaction by drug
provided that doctor had exercised due care.
1) Therapeutic misadventure is one of the defenses used by doctor when case of medical negligence
is brought against the doctor.
2) Ignorance of the possibility of a reaction, or continuation in the prescribing of a drug with adverse
reaction amounts to negligence. If doctor fails to stop offending drug, he cannot take this defense.
3) The defence of the doctor stands only if he can show that; the steps he took was quite justified, the
hazards were quite unexpected and is not known to occur, he took reasonable precaution against the
possible hazard as its possibility was known to him or, he had no other way but to take the risk of
hazard, though he knew its possibility.
(4) In case of experimental misadventure, if the doctor wants to use this point as a defence against a
charge of negligence he must justify the reason for his experimentation and must show that he got
valid consent from the patient or his guardian, after duly explaining him the merits and demerits of the
experiment and the risk involved in the act.