Compensation and Redress ; legislation & jurisprudence ; Dentistry ; Dentists ; legislation & jurisprudence ; Dissent and Disputes ; legislation & jurisprudence ; Humans ; Malpractice ; legislation & jurisprudence

OBJECTIVE: To seek and ascertain indicators that can be used in the civil competence assessment of the mental disorders involved in compensation of personal injury. METHODS: A retrospective study was made on the data related to the interviewee's mental status assessed by forensic experts during the period from 2003 to 2005 in Institute of Forensic Science, Ministry of Justice, P.R.China. The 6 indicators, including awareness of situation, factual understanding of issues, appreciation of likely consequences, rational manipulation of information, functioning in one's own environment, and communication of choice, were graded and statistically analyzed using SPSS 11.5 software. RESULTS: The 6 indicators correlated well with the assessment of forensic experts ,with the related coefficient between 0.632 and 0.876, and the inter-related coefficient among the 6 indicators between 0.575 and 0.911. CONCLUSION The 6 indicators could be used for the civil competence assessment and may also be taken as the basis for further standardization and quantification of civil competence.
Antisocial Personality Disorder/diagnosis* ; Compensation and Redress/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Expert Testimony/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Forensic Psychiatry ; Humans ; Insanity Defense ; Mental Competency/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Psychotic Disorders/diagnosis* ; Wounds and Injuries/economics*

BACKGROUND: The active involvement of anesthesiologists in chronic pain management has been associated with an increase in the number of related medical dispute cases. METHODS: Using the Korean Society of Anesthesiologists Legislation Committee database covering case files from July 2009 to June 2016, we explored injuries and liability characteristics in a subset of cases involving chronic pain management. RESULTS: During the study period, 58 cases were eligible for final analysis. There were 27 cases related to complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), many of them involving problems with financial compensation (24/27, 88.9%). The CRPS cases showed male dominance (22 males, 5 females). In a disproportionately large number of these cases, the causative injury occurred during military training (n = 5). Two cases were associated with noninvasive pain managements, and 29 cases with invasive procedures. Of the latter group, procedures involving the spine (both neuraxial and non-neuraxial procedures) resulted in more severe complications than other procedures (P = 0.007). Seven of the patients who underwent invasive procedures died. The most common type of invasive procedures were lumbosacral procedures (16/29, 55.2%). More specifically, the most common damaging events were inadvertent intravascular or intrathecal injection of local anesthetics (n = 6). CONCLUSIONS: Several characteristics of medical disputes related to chronic pain management were identified: the prevalence of injury benefit claims in CRPS patients, higher severity of complications in procedures performed at the spine or cervical region, and the preventability of inadvertent intravascular or intrathecal injection of local anesthetics.
Anesthetics, Local ; Chronic Pain* ; Compensation and Redress ; Dissent and Disputes* ; Humans ; Injections, Spinal ; Legislation, Medical ; Male ; Malpractice ; Military Personnel ; Pain Management ; Prevalence ; Spine