• Surgeon faces negligence charges after patient dies from surgical error

A court in Singapore summoned a consultant urologist on March 12 after he was accused of causing the death of a 63-year-old woman during surgery.

The doctor faces charges of medical negligence short of culpable homicide, after mistakenly severing the patient’s superior mesenteric artery and coeliac trunk instead of her renal vein during an operation on April 29, 2022, cutting blood supply to her abdominal organs.

The patient died on May 2, 2022.

Court documents indicate that the surgeon completed the procedure without verifying that he had cut the correct vessels. The operation had been performed to remove a growth in the patient’s kidney, according to a coroner’s inquiry in November 2025, which confirmed her death resulted from the surgical error.

An expert report from the Singapore Academy of Medicine noted that the doctor paused the surgery for 13 minutes after realizing the mistake but did not acknowledge it or seek assistance, worsening the outcome. The report added that any competent surgeon would have recognized that major vessels unrelated to the kidney had been cut and would have acted to correct the situation while the patient was still in the operating room.

The state coroner also said the surgeon was not fully forthcoming in his court testimony, as his initial medical report failed to mention the accidental cutting of the wrong arteries. The hospital’s second report addressed the issue only hesitantly.

The court has adjourned the case until April. According to the Singapore Medical Council, the doctor remains registered and continues to practice at the hospital.

Under Singapore law, causing death through negligence can carry a prison sentence of up to two years, a fine, or both.