A woman filed a suit Tuesday against Saitama Medical School Hospital, demanding 67 million yen in compensation for an alleged surgical mistake that has left her with pain in her right hand.
Hideko Kurosawa, 44, from Ryokami, Saitama Prefecture, filed the suit with the Saitama District Court.
Kurosawa visited an orthopedist at the hospital in October 1998 about numbness in her right hand and had surgery a month later after the doctor said the pain was due to pressure on a nerve.
However, Kurosawa started to feel a sharp pain and suffer swelling in her hand — symptoms she had not experienced before — a few days after the operation, according to the suit. She had another operation at the same hospital the following February, but the pain did not go away, the suit says.
Kurosawa visited another hospital, where she was diagnosed as suffering from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, which causes pain merely by touch, and told that the nerves in the hand had been damaged by an operation.
Kurosawa, who has trouble doing chores due to the pain, claims the nerves were damaged due to an inappropriate operation and that the hospital had overlooked her RSD.
Saitama Medical School Hospital meanwhile maintains that the woman's pain comes from complications arising from the operation, but denies any malpractice.