Preoperative consent: how to make sure your practice is legal--Part two.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) came into force in October 2007. This is now the keystone of the law regarding the assessment of capacity to consent and the treatment of those who lack capacity to consent for themselves. The first article in this two-part series (Corfield & Pomeroy 2008) covered preoperative consent: this article discusses the MCA (with accompanying relevant case law) in more detail by the use of illustrative examples and concentrates on issues that can arise once the patient is in the operating suite.