For 13 years he lived with the gauze that doctors had forgotten in his chest. Until he died at the age of 76 from the consequences of that very serious mistake. Now the hospital where he was operated on has been condemned to pay almost one and a half million euros to his heirs plus legal costs.
This was decided with an order by the judge of the Palermo court Angela Notaro, who accepted the requests presented by the lawyers Massimiliano Fabio and Giuseppe Mancuso, lawyers of the family members of the patient originally from San Fratello (Me) who underwent surgery on 13 November 2003 in " Maria Eleonora Hospital srl" of Palermo and died on 4 August 2016.
The man wore the gauze and radiopaque thread used for the operation in his chest for almost 14 years, without anyone noticing this anomaly. The presence of the foreign body - as established by the expert Renato Tona - led to the formation of «a voluminous mass in the rib cage with a diameter of approximately 15 centimeters which caused cardiovascular decompensation in the patient already suffering from other pathologies pre-existing the operation, which caused death ».
For 14 years the "mass" was treated as an echinococcal cyst and only with the reopening of the sternum in the Papardo hospital in Messina on 2 August 2016 was it possible to detect that it was, instead, a foreign body abandoned in the chest of the patient during the 2003 operation at Maria Eleonora Hospital. On the basis of the conclusions of the expert witness, the judge found that the Maria Eleonora Hospital company was responsible for the damage. The order, filed on January 10 at the Civil Court of Palermo, is immediately enforceable and the condemned company will be able to appeal within 30 days.
(Unioneonline/D)
