A district consumer forum has ordered an eye specialist in Chennai to pay Rs 50,000 as compensation to a patient who lost his eyesight, allegedly due to the negligence of the doctor.

According to the complainant S.N.Rangarajan, a resident of Adayar, he had approached Dr.K.Premraj of Prem's Eye Clinic at Saidapet to have a check-up of his right eye on 15th May 1998, and the doctor had advised for a cataract surgery after performing the tests.

The doctor operated his eyes two days later, and the patient was discharged the same day. However, after four days, Rangarajan found his vision in the right eye deteriorating, and could not open the eyes fully. When he consulted another eye specialist, the second doctor told him that the operation itself was unnecessary.

In his petition to the District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum, Chennai, the complainant alleged that the doctor had failed to brief him on the exact condition of the eye before the operation, and had performed the surgery to extract money, rather than assessing the success rate of the operation.

Further, the doctor had not taken the basic precautions that are necessary while performing operation on a diabetic patient, as he had 250 mgs of blood sugar on the day of the surgery.

The court in its verdict observed that the doctor should not have performed the operation on that day, as it was not advisable to operate on patients having blood sugar levels beyond 200 mgs.

Commenting on the doctor's argument that the operation was a success and the patient had not followed his instructions after the surgery, the court maintained that the doctor had not specified the type of instructions that have to be followed by the patient after the surgery. The court felt that the doctor had behaved in a negligent manner, or otherwise, the patient would not have lost his eyesight.

The court also directed the doctor to return an amount of Rs.11, 000, which was charged for the operation and treatment, besides a compensation of Rs.50, 000 to the complainant at the earliest.