The Supreme Court of India on Monday quashed criminal proceedings against a paediatric surgeon who had performed an orchidectomy (removal of the testicle) on a 1.5-year-old child, amid allegations by the father that no consent had been given for the procedure.
A Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra heard the matter in which the child's father contended that he had consented only to orchidopexy, a procedure to reposition an undescended testicle, but the surgeon proceeded to perform an orchidectomy instead, allegedly without his approval, contending that the consent form was interpolated to include the permission to perform an orchidectomy.
Aggrieved by the High Court's decision refusing to quash the case, the surgeon appealed to the Supreme Court, contending that the consent form was not interpolated, nor was orchidectomy added to the form after filling out the consent form. The surgeon defended the operation, saying that the consent form contained an option either to perform orchidopexy/orchidectomy. Also, his decision to proceed with orchidectomy was supported by the Medical Board's opinion, he added.
Finding force in the Appellant-surgeon's contention, the judgment authored by Justice Misra did not fault the Appellant's decision to proceed with orchidectomy, saying that a surgeon operating on a patient is a best judge to adopt the best surgical procedures, particularly when it is backed by medical board's opinion, which supported the Orchidectomy as one of the alternatives to obviate chances of malignancy in future.
“…in the opinion of the Medical Board the procedure adopted was appropriate. Moreover, the operating surgeon is the best judge of which one of the two procedures is to be adopted.”, the court said.“In the instant case, no malice is attributed to the doctor and there is no dispute that the consent form was executed for undertaking a medical procedure.
Further, the medical opinion is to the effect that the procedure adopted by the doctor was one of the alternatives recognized to meet such a medical exigency. No doubt, Medical Board's opinion indicates that such procedure should be carried out after obtaining consent, but there is nothing to indicate that the consent form already obtained was not in order or that no consent was obtained.
Besides, the consent letter has been brought on record as Annexure P-2. A perusal thereof would indicate that in the column where the nature of proposed surgery is to be mentioned, both types of surgery i.e., Orchidopexy and Orchiectomy are mentioned by putting a slash (/), which means that the other surgery, namely, Orchidectomy, was one of the options available.”, the court added.Resultantly, the appeal was allowed, and the pending proceedings were quashed.
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