[Form and extent of informed consent on anesthesia risks: evaluation of a survey of all legal experts in Austria].

BACKGROUND

Statistically, the chance of a patient to win a court case because of a legally insufficient informed consent is approximately 70%. In Austria the judgment whether the anesthesia-related risk of a patient was correctly addressed depends generally on the opinion of a certified expert court witness (CW).

OBJECTIVES

The opinion whether well-known anesthetic risks in a commissioned court report drawn by Austrian CWs would be considered to be "typically anesthesia-related" and "needed to be addressed" when obtaining an informed consent was evaluated.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

A questionnaire was sent to all Austrian CWs with 79 known anesthesia-related risks. The percentage of CWs who considered the enumerated risks as "typically anesthesia related" and "needed to be addressed" when obtaining informed consent was evaluated.

RESULTS

In 32 out of 79 risks between 40% and 60% of the CWs were of the opinion that informed consent was necessary. Therefore, in a legal dispute on whether an informed consent was legally sufficient or not, the judgment of the CWs is unpredictable. In addition, due to the large number of possible complications needed to be addressed, it is not feasible to obtain a legally compliant risk disclosure.

CONCLUSION

In future new methods of knowledge transfer to the patients should be developed. In addition, a standardization of the evaluation criteria for CWs in terms of improvement of legal certainty would be desirable.