A 48-year-old male patient at a hospital in the city of Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, died late last month after accidentally being administered a lethal drug due to a computer input error several days earlier, it was learned Sunday.
Toyama Prefectural Police said they have begun an investigation into a possible case of professional negligence resulting in death.
According to officials at the Takaoka City Hospital, the man, from the town of Kosugi in the prefecture, was admitted Nov. 20 after it was suspected he was suffering from pneumonia.
A doctor in his thirties who was not identified typed up on a computer instructions for the medication to be given to the patient, who was suffering from high fever, but mistakenly clicked on "sakushin," for the phonetic rendition of the muscle relaxant succin, or suxametonium, instead of saxizon, used to curb inflammation and phonetically pronounced "sakushizon," the hospital said.