He did not prescribe a neurological examination that would signal the onset of multiple sclerosis , discovered only two years later .
A doctor, a general practitioner, was sentenced by the Civil Court of Milan to compensate 830 thousand euros to a patient who today, at 35, is forced into a wheelchair and receiving continuous assistance with an 80% disability .
The non-prescription dates back to 2012, in 2014 the identification of the disease with the serious effects that developed already between 2016 and 2018. The 28 months of diagnostic delay removed the patient, who was on the way to a university career in the field of medicine , from access to care. Consequently, that disability, which according to the judges would have remained at 15% for at least ten years, has reached the current 80%, which it would have reached only in 20 years.
Judge Angelo Ricciardi writes that "it is not a question of a loss of chance" but of "a certain, consolidated and quantifiable damage " in the "best physical and psychological conditions of life that the patient would have benefited from" with a timely diagnosis.
The doctor was charged with "a guilty diagnostic delay " because any further diagnostic investigation appeared to her "at an inopportune moment", even "for dubious simulation".
(Unioneonline / D)
