The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court rejected Tuesday a Vietnamese-American man’s demand that Saigon Eye Hospital pay him US$80,000 as compensation for the damage caused to his right eye during an operation five years ago.
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Huynh Huu Thong, a 52-year-old Vietnamese-American, said the amount consisted of the expenses and income loss he incurred from after a botched operation that affected his right eye so seriously he had to return to the U.S. for treatment in 2009. However, the court affirmed that there is no scientific ground to conclude that doctors at the hospital had caused serious damage to his right eye. According to the case file, Thong visited Vietnam from the U.S. to see his family in June 2009, and went to the hospital in District 1 for examination and treatment after experiencing weakening sight in his right eye. He was diagnosed with a cataract and on June 5, he underwent an operation using Phacoemulsification (Phaco), a modern cataract surgery in which the internal lens is emulsified with an ultrasonic hand piece and aspirated from the eye. The cost of the surgery was VND7.9 million ($379). After that, Thong’s eyesight was not improved so he returned to the hospital, but the doctors only gave him some medicine and eye drops. Thong later visited Ho Chi Minh City Eye Hospital for examination, where doctors gave him a diagnosis of corneal dystrophy, a group of rare disorders characterized by the bilateral abnormal deposition of substances in the cornea, the transparent front part of the eye. Doctors warned Thong that his complication could lead to blindness if it was not treated, he said in his complaint. Thong then returned to the U.S. for treatment of his eye problem, which he said had been brought about by malpractice at Saigon Eye Hospital. At court, the representative of the hospital and the representative of the two doctors who performed the surgery on Thong’s eye denied his accusation, insisting that they had done nothing wrong. Some complications occur during a small percentage of Phaco surgeries, and doctors warned Thong of this before the surgery, the representative of the hospital said, adding that while being treated post-surgery, Thong returned to the U.S. on his own accord. The jury said that after three re-examinations at Saigon Eye Hospital after the surgery, Thong returned to the U.S. on June 20 because his visa had expired, not because his eye’s condition got worse, and later received treatment at a hospital in the U.S. without consulting the Vietnamese infirmary. Therefore, the jury concluded that it is unreasonable to blame Saigon Eye Hospital for Thong’s corneal dystrophy.
In addition, corneal dystrophy can be treated effectively in Vietnam, but Thong returned to the U.S. for treatment at his own discretion, the jury said. The court thus dismissed Thong’s claim but exempted him from court fees and refunded him the VND30 million ($1,410) he had paid as an advance payment.
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