A court in Seville has sentenced a doctor to indemnify with 15,000 euros to a woman who became pregnant carrying an IUD, alleging that he had not given him exhaustive information about the risks of it.
After the birth of her first child, the patient went to the doctor's office to avoid a new pregnancy and he recommended the placement of an intrauterine device (IUD) as a contraceptive method.
It was implemented on June 14, 2002 without the applicant signing any consent document. The patient had to go to the following month to have an ultrasound to check the correct placement but did not do it when she was menstruating. The next month the doctor was on vacation and it could not be done either. The IUD appears to have moved into the abdominal cavity and, three months after placement, the woman became pregnant again.
The sentence includes as a cause of pregnancy that the woman did not follow the recommendation to use other contraceptive methods during the first months, so in this regard there is no accusation of medical malpractice, however if you condemn the doctor to compensate the patient for not explaining the risks that could derive from the intervention.
When the events occurred, the law of informed consent was not yet in force (which requires doctors to explain and present a document to patients who may or may not accept the medical act and, if so, must sign it to confirm that the risks have been explained and that he accepts them), but it is considered that the doctor should have given the information about the IUD verbally because it is understood that, if he had known, the woman could have decided not to undergo the medical action.
The chances of an IUD migrating to the abdominal area are low, specifically about 0.87-1.6 times in every thousand cases. The effectiveness of an IUD is also 98-99%, so the risk always exists.
Even so, the court understands that having not been informed, the woman could not assess the decision to submit or not to the intervention.
Luckily today many doctors offer more information and informed consent to be signed by patients. However, there are still cases where this does not happen and sometimes sentences like this are needed to affirm the patients' right to know what they are going to do and what risks it entails.
