Abstract
We searched for articles dealing with lawsuits of anesthesia-related accidents including dental anesthesia among 893 newspapers and magazine published in Japan between 1980 and 2003.
1. There were a total of 614 articles dealing with lawsuits of anesthesia-related accidents involving 257 lawsuits (2.4 articles/lawsuit). Of these, there were a total of 26 articles dealing with dental anesthesia accidents (1.9 articles/lawsuit).
2. The classificatium was as follows : 214 articles on “Institution of legal action” ; 148 articles on “Court-ordered compensation” ; 147 articles on “Settlement and out-of-court settlement” ; 56 articles on “Oral argument” ; 39 artcles on “Dismissal”. The most articles were Court-ordered compensation with 3.1 articles/lawsuit.
3. The average size of lawsuits at the time of instituting legal action was 89.63 million yen (range : 4.09 to 216.00 million yen), while at time of settlement, out-of-court settlement or court-ordered compensation was 53.34 million yen (range : 2.2 to 150 million yen).
