SINGAPORE: A consultant urologist was charged in a district court on Thursday (March 12) with causing the death of a 63-year-old woman while performing surgery on her.
Dr Fong Yan Kit was charged with doing a negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide.
The 54-year-old is accused of erroneously severing the patient’s superior mesenteric artery and coeliac trunk – which supply blood to the stomach and bowels – instead of her renal vein during surgery on April 29, 2022, at Raffles Hospital.
The mistake led to a lack of blood supply to her abdominal organs. She died in the hospital on May 2, 2022.
According to court documents, the doctor concluded the operation without checking that he had severed the correct vessels.
The patient had undergone the operation to remove a growth in her kidney, according to a coroner’s inquiry into her death in November 2025.
State Coroner Adam Nakhoda said then that the patient died as a result of the medical procedure.
An Academy of Medicine, Singapore (AMS) expert report by Professor Christopher Cheng, cited by the state coroner, said that when Dr Fong realised an error had occurred during the surgery, he paused for 13 minutes but failed to accept the mistake and call for help.
Said Prof Cheng in the report: “Any reasonably competent surgeon would have realised by now too many large vessels not directly related to the kidney had been ligated and transected.
“The consequences of ignoring the obvious clues and making no attempts to correct the situation while the opportunity may still exist while the patient is still in the operating theatre is incomprehensible.”
The state coroner said that Dr Fong was not forthcoming in his explanations to the court, as his first medical report did not mention that he had mistakenly severed the wrong arteries.
The state coroner added: “Similarly, the Raffles Hospital second medical report at best skirted around the fact that the coeliac trunk and the superior mesenteric artery were transected due to an identification error on the part of Dr Fong.”
Dr Fong’s case has been adjourned to April. Checks by The Straits Times showed that he is still listed as a doctor, operating at Raffles Hospital.
ST has contacted the Singapore Medical Council for comment.
For causing death by a negligent act, an offender can be jailed for up to two years, fined or both. - The Straits Times/ANN
