Six people, including doctors and paramedics, have been placed under investigation by the Naples Public Prosecutor's Office as part of the investigation into the damaged heart transplant performed on a two-year-and-four-month-old boy at Naples' Monaldi Hospital on December 23.
These are members of the teams that performed the organ removal in Bolzano and the transplant in Naples. Currently, all are charged with negligent assault. Not all of the staff members suspended from the Monaldi hospital are under investigation. Another line of inquiry concerns the closure of the department.
Investigators are also focusing on the decision to suspend the pediatric transplant service adopted by the Monaldi Hospital management following the complaint filed by the child's parents. The Naples prosecutor's office (prosecutor Giuseppe Tittaferrante of the labor and professional misconduct section coordinated by deputy prosecutor Antonio Ricci), together with the Carabinieri of the Trento NAS and Naples NAS, will analyze compliance with the protocols regarding the packaging and transportation of the organ, which arrived by land in Naples.
"A few days after the transplant, they called us and told us the new heart wasn't working. So my son had to be hooked up to a machine for extracorporeal blood oxygenation while waiting for a new organ. " Now, "we're anxiously awaiting a new organ for him. The hours are ticking by, and time is running out." This is the plea from Patrizia Mercolino, the child's mother.
Supporting the family is lawyer Francesco Petruzzi: "What happened is extremely serious. This is a case of extremely serious negligent injuries. We hope the crime remains as such and isn't downgraded." Among the "extremely serious causes" that led to the current situation, the lawyer specifies, "is the use of dry ice instead of natural ice to transport the organ, which involves temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius, causing frostbite to the organ."
The decision to remove the child's heart, which still allowed him to function daily and go to school, was also contested. "He wasn't on a heartbeat; he was relatively well. He was lively. Why," Petruzzi concludes, "remove the heart before checking the condition of the new one?" The family's lawyer concludes that there is time to address the civil implications: "Now the priority is to find a new heart for the child."
(Unioneonline)