It has been two years since 45 patients suffered damaging side effects to their eyes after undergoing surgeries at a Beijing hospital, and a local court must now decide who was responsible.

On Wednesday, the Haidian District People’s Court held a second hearing in which 17 patients who lost their eyesight — some entirely — sued both Peking University Third Hospital and Tianjin Jingming New Technological Development Company. The hospital used gas produced by the company to treat retinal detachment, a disorder in which the retina, a light-sensitive tissue, separates from the back of the eye.

Xie Chaohai, one of the plaintiffs, told Sixth Tone that he went to the hospital on June 17, 2015. The doctor suggested treatment with a gas, octafluoropropane, that expands inside the eyeball and would push his retina back into place. The estimated recovery time was two weeks.

After the surgery, Xie, now 46, felt continuous pain in his left eye. “The doctor told me it was common,” he said. Xie was given eye drops that were supposed to relieve his pain, but it only got worse. Xie soon lost sight in his left eye.

Twelve days after the surgery, Xie received a phone call from the hospital, asking him to come in for a review. There, he encountered several other patients in similar situations. They had undergone the same surgery and had similar complaints: Complete or near-complete loss of sight in the eye that was treated, as well as, eventually, declining eyesight in the other eye, persistent headaches, and nerve pain.

At the same time, 26 patients of the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, also experienced side effects after their retinal detachment surgeries. After an investigation by China’s Food and Drug Administration, Jingming was found to have produced the gas used at both facilities. The same batch had also been sold to another 82 medical institutions. The company was asked to stop its octafluoropropane production line, and around 8,700 bottles of the gas were recalled by the authorities. The company was fined around 5.2 million yuan ($767,000).

Lawyer Liu Wenfang, who represents the plaintiffs in the Beijing court case, told Sixth Tone that because official investigations have pointed to the gas as the main cause of the patients’ blindness, they think Jingming should bear most of the legal responsibility. But the hospital was negligent, too, for not properly examining the gas, she said. “The first case happened on June 3 [in 2015], but the hospital was still using the gas for treatment in late June,” Liu said.

But the hospital’s lawyer, Ji Lei, told Sixth Tone it did not make any mistakes in treating the patients or procuring the gas. However, she added that if the court finds the hospital responsible, then it will accept the verdict.

Both the hospital and the plaintiffs have asked Jingming to disclose the added components of its gas. According to national standards, for medical use the octafluoropropane content should not be less than 99.5 percent, but two sample tests showed that the gas used was only 70 percent and 86 percent pure. According to the lawyer, Liu, it hasn’t been possible to identify what the rest of the gas is — only Jingming can provide this information.

Sixth Tone was unable to reach Jingming for comment on Friday. According to a report by the Beijing Morning Post, the company’s lawyer apologized during Wednesday’s court session. They said that although the company would like to bear the responsibility and pay compensation, the gas components are confidential. The court has not yet set a date for when it will announce a verdict.

Xie said he was his family’s lone breadwinner, and used to run a recycling depot that earned him 200,000 yuan per year. But because he can only see out of his right eye now — and only when using a magnifying glass — he has been unable to do his job, resulting in a loss of income for his family.

“I have been to many hospitals, but they only give me these eye drops,” Xie said. “I always feel dizzy; I want to throw up. But no doctor can treat me.”

Editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

(Header image: Xie Chaohai drips eye drops into his bloodshot left eye in Beijing, April 16, 2016. Yang Haodong/VCG)