| Theme |
Guideline for Medical Practice of Gastric Ulcers |
| Title |
Legal Problems Related to Guidelines for Gastric Ulcer Treatment |
| Author |
Toshiharu Furukawa |
Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University / TMI associates |
| [ Summary ] |
Legal medical standards are usually applied in two ways in Japanese medical malpractice cases. One application is a judgment on the quality of the medical treatment, and the other is an evaluation of the validity of informed consent. Legal medical standards are not equal in all medical institutions. If physicians in a medical institution are expected to be aware of the most recent medical information, that information becomes the legal medical standard of the institution. For physicians in major metropolitan medical institutions, such knowledge constitutes the medical standard even before it is published in the guidelines of a committee of an established national medical professional society. The guidelines for gastric ulcer treatment may be used as evidence in medical malpractice suits brought by patients based on both the quality of treatment and validity of informed consent. In addition, it is possible that the validity of informed consent may be given more weight by the courts than the following a course of standardized treatment by individual physicians/medical institutions according to the guidelines in cases where patients have done extensive research on and exhibit informed knowledge of new treatment modalities. |