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.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]