Iryû: Team Medical Dragon

- Season 1

(2006)

To get ahead and perform the Batista operation an ambitious young assistant professor needs a unrepentant and expelled surgeon's expertise. The shameless former doctor is in debt and indulging in easy women somewhere in Japan. The young assistant uses her charm and feminine wiles to recruit the former doctor to the university hospital. There are multiple rivalries and agenda confluencing at the hospital. The hospital has a reputation for receiving terminal or hopeless patients.

An elderly patient is being treated with an experimental drug that nonetheless offers little hope. The doctors are being feted by the pharmaceutical salespersons. They go golfing. Miki joins her man as a nurse. Ryu is mentoring a young doctor who performs his first independent surgery. The hospital at first refuses admit a foreigner without insurance until Rytu steps in.

Team dragon is taking shape and is comprised of three people now, although Ryu is helping out at the emergency department as well. A doctor cannot officially tend to his hospitalized daughter - per the institution's policy - but that does not stop him from making decisions regarding her health. A surprise and sudden field operation is required.

The young doctor is invited to join team dragon, but he has not officially accepted. he comes across a girl with a gush to her head. She is able to be discharged with a minimum of a fuss. In the meanwhile, multiple arrivals at the emergency department make the ward quite busy. The doctors review their files in order to take the best course of action. It leads to an inconvenient discovery.

With the team almost complete the assistant professor puts one more member to the test operating on a patient. The assistant professor has two patients to choose from for the pioneering Batista procedure. One is a teenage girl with better chances who has sic months to live and the other is the former head nurse who has three months left.

The Batista surgery is underway. This is the innovative and pioneering moment everyone has been waiting for and for which Asada was brought in. A cadre of nurses and doctors is working on the patient and a larger group is observing the surgery. The patient's son and brother are outside sweating and worried. It all hinges on this.

There is lots of hand wringing and regret with the Batista team betrayed and its achievement ignored by the press and medical community. The North Japan rivals had brought in foreign help. One relationship is swept under the rug, especially since it is at an end, but another comes to light. This leads to movement within the departments and a reckoning for all involved.

More background of the conspiracy against the Meishin hospital comes to light even if two of the doctors are in near drunken state. The timing of the operations are not coincidental. The North is trying to grab all the patients it can. A waitress serving them is shot twice and on the floor. The waitress is near death and so the customers are doing their best to help her.

Having been stabbed in the back by Professor Noguchi the Batista team proceeds with its second operation under the watchful eyes of the new professorship candidate. There is another person watching as well however and she proposes a more democratic way of electing the new professor. A boy and his parents believe the Batista team and entrust the child's life to the surgeons. The team discovers that he was at North Japan hospital previously. They also discover that North Japan has been operating on patients needlessly.

The vote is looming and all sides are scheming. A little boy needs surgery, but his situation and physiology is complicated so the head of the department would not allow the surgery to proceed. The boy's parents are angry especially after his life being saved at the hospital already once. A doctor becomes a snitch and another a betrayer.

The last-minute surgery is proceeding and a few untried and untested procedures are being deployed. The rest of the hospital is watching. The surgical team has a surprise at hand because it was not allowed to do the normal pre-op examination. This puts the life of an infant boy in further jeopardy. A second emergency occurs at the hospital.