Doctor who mistakenly cut woman’s arteries during kidney surgery charged
A consultant urologist in Singapore has been charged with causing the death of a 63-year-old woman during a kidney surgery, after allegedly mistakenly cutting her major arteries instead of a vein.
A 63-year-old woman died in 2022 after consultant urologist Dr. Fong Yan Kit mistakenly severed her superior mesenteric artery and coeliac trunk—major vessels supplying blood to the stomach and bowels—during minimally invasive kidney tumor removal surgery at Raffles Hospital in Singapore. The patient had blood in her urine, and scans showed a 7.5cm tumor in her left kidney, leading to her consent for the laparoscopic procedure on April 29, 2022. Instead of disconnecting the renal veins, Dr. Fong cut the wrong arteries, causing catastrophic blood loss to abdominal organs; he paused for 13 minutes without documenting any attempt to seek a second opinion or fix the error.
Medical expert Prof. Cheng Shin Chuen reviewed surgical video and noted multiple missed chances to identify the error, as any vessel displacement would have been visible on pre-op CT scans; bleeding was not 'commonly encountered' as Dr. Fong claimed in his reports. Dr. Fong's initial medical reports omitted the misidentification and suggested the tumor displaced the vessels, while Raffles Hospital's report skirted the issue. Subsequent surgeons saw the severed arteries and considered rejoining them but aborted due to her deteriorating condition; she died at 3:05am on May 2, 2022.
State Coroner Adam Nakhoda ruled it a medical misadventure in a November 2025 inquiry, criticizing Dr. Fong for not being forthcoming and providing untrue accounts. The coroner noted that when Dr. Fong realized an error had happened, the surgeon paused for 13 minutes without seeking help or attempting repairs. An expert from the Academy of Medicine Singapore noted no documentation of help-seeking during the pause. The coroner's findings were released in February 2026, but no criminal charges are reported in available sources.
No Philippine news coverage from GMA, ABS-CBN, Inquirer, or Philstar appears in available search results regarding this case. All sources are Singapore-focused (e.g., The Straits Times, Mothership, Malay Mail), with forum discussions but no Philippine media mentions. The available information comes from Singapore-based reports covering the coroner's inquiry rather than criminal charges against the doctor.
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