Palabras clave: consentimiento informado; «lex artis ad hoc»; responsabilidad civil; responsabilidad civil objetiva; responsabilidad civil subjetiva; responsabilidad médica y hospitalaria.

Abstract: getting an informed consent from the patient before a healthcare intervention is a professional standard of care requirement under the Spanish Law. When informed consent has been given, ordinary risks derived from the intervention (particularly from the chirurgical interventions) are not a source of civil liability for the medical team. On the opposite, lack of informed consent may give rise to liability for negligence, entitling the patient to ask for damages arisen from the intervention. Every physical harm suffered by the patient — even those derived from ordinary risks — as well as economic and moral losses are considered relevant damages in these cases, including the patient’s lack of readiness to live on under the intervention consequences, and the violation of the patient’s right to decide about his own medical future (a right that has been qualified as a human right by the Spanish courts).