Cataract surgery is the most frequently performed eye surgery and is the cause for one third of all lawsuits against ophthalmologists, according to the article. Cataracts occur when the lens of the eye becomes cloudy and opaque, which can compromise vision. During cataract surgery, the clouded lens is removed, and an artificial lens is placed. Informed consent is a process by which the patient is informed of what will happen during surgery, what the possible risks are, and what he or she can expect during recovery. Cataract surgery has a very low risk of complications, but the number of malpractice claims associated with cataract surgery is rising. For a malpractice claim to be initiated, negligence, injury, and the proximate cause (i.e., the procedure caused the injury) need to be evident, but because malpractice is often hard to prove, inadequate or lack of informed consent is used as a secondary cause in more than 90 percent of all ophthalmologic malpractice cases. It has been well documented in several clinical studies that very little of the information given during the informed consent procedure can be recalled correctly by the patients even one day after surgery, the article states.
Christopher G. Kiss, M.D., of the University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues studied the decision-making process by patients on the day before cataract surgery and evaluated the extent to which the informed consent process influenced patients' decisions to undergo surgery.
The researchers enrolled 70 patients (average age 70 years) about to undergo cataract surgery. On the day before their surgeries, the 70 patients underwent a standardized
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Contact: Wolfgang Radner, M.D.
wolfgang.radner@univie.ac.at
JAMA and Archives Journals
12-Jan-2004