ABSTRACT
The role of a particular patient's attitude to a risk in different circumstances is demonstrated by the Australian case of Maree Whittaker. She had suffered a penetrating injury to her eyeball as a child, and considered herself disfigured by the subsequent appearance. Forty years later, she sought cosmetic surgery for the deformed globe. She was adamant that she would not have surgery if it entailed risk to her healthy contralateral eye, since she feared blindness. Assured there was none, she underwent surgery and suffered sympathetic ophthalmia, where the sight of her healthy eye was severely damaged. The risk of sympathetic ophthalmia was 1:14,000, a miniscule risk. But the court held that this particular patient attached significance to the risk of blindness that transpired in her non-operated eye, and should have had this risk disclosed to her, irrespective of its rarity. Her case was decided in 1992, and remains good law.
