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The Ankur Arora Murder Case which has been billed as a medical thriller based on a 'true story' isn't actually that and is according to one reviewer a rather bad remake of the Paul Newman-starrer The Verdict. The reviews suggest that it's a movie about the death of a young patient caused due to medical negligence and the victim's mother's quest to find justice for her son.
It has Kay Kay Menon starring as the reputed surgeon Dr Asthana who goofs up by operating on his patient suffering from appendicitis even though the patient's stomach wasn't empty. This particular scene where it's implied that the child had eaten a few biscuits from a well-known biscuit brand which sued Vikram Bhatt's ASA production Pvt Ltd for infringement of copyright and also for displaying their product in bad light. Bhatt's camp responded by claiming that biscuit lying next to the boy doesn't constitute infringement, that the boy dies due to medical negligence and the company's allegations were unfounded.
Anyway legal hassles in the real world aside, the film mainly deals with legal tangles in the reel world when the child's mother takes the doctor to court for medical negligence. The film throws up two interesting medical questions:
What is the danger of undergoing an operation on a not-empty stomach?
The most common danger of having food in the stomach during a surgery is aspiration (when the food in the stomach is thrown up while the patient is unconscious and paralysed due to the anaesthetic). It then enters the wind pipe and enters the lungs causing suffocation which can lead to pneumonia or death.
Does it amount to medical negligence when the doctor knows that the stomach is not empty and still undergoes the operation?
According to a Hospital Administrator, if doctors are aware of a patient's condition and do not cancel the surgery then it is considered negligent on the part of the doctor. By law it's the doc's responsibility to ask the patient they've eaten anything, whether they suffer from any allergies and most surgeries get cancelled due to these reasons.