[Surgical risk. A developmental concept].

Abstract

The word risk has several senses. Whether in civil, penal or administrative law, it supposes the notion of liability. Liability too often leads to decide in advance that there has been a fault. The corollary of fault is repair. One condition for this is that there is damage, a cause-effect relationship and evidence. Then what about liability without fault, with the notion of burden of the proof, of compensation for damage, in the ill-defined context of presumed fault? There is a praetorian law about medical liability. It is an adaptation, with the passing years, of common law to the specific issues of medicine. Surgery is a profession with risks and duties. The reasonable liability of the surgeon represents his claims for fame. The surgeon must neither be released of any liability nor assumed to be guilty a priori. There is enough matter for a wide ethical and legal debate about a concept-risk-that has undergone many vagaries.