Renowned journalist Chitra Subramaniam has sued Manipal Hospitals, represented through its Chairman-Medical Advisory Board and Medical Director Dr H Sudarsahan Ballal, and others in Bengaluru alleging gross medical negligence and willfully providing false and dangerously misleading information about medical implants.
The consumer complaint, filed in a Bangalore court, relates to an ankle surgery done in January 2014. According to the complaint, implants to correct a fracture did not meet medical standards. Subramaniam says her life was put at grave risk due to use of faulty implants, details of which she says were never given to her despite repeated pleas.
Subramaniam suffers from multiple myeloma, a life-threatening cancer of the bone marrow. Regular MRIs are part of her routine check-ups. According to the complaint, the faulty implants made these MRIs impossible and the implants had to be removed by a second surgery.
According to Subramaniam, Manipal Hospitals and Dr. Murildhar Rao, the orthopedic surgeon who operated on her at Manipal Northside Hospital in Malleswaram, repeatedly provided wrong and misleading information claiming it was given to them by the Indian arm of Synthes, the Switzerland-based subsidiary of the global conglomerate Johnson and Johnson.
However a Manipal Hospitals spokesperson said , "We have not got any legal notice or official communication from the court of law and hence we will not be able to comment until we study the case further." eom/blr