After an ordeal that went through ten hospitalizations and five operations, the sentence arrives for the two Venetian hospitals. The ordinary court of Vicenza sentenced the Local Health Authority 7 Pedemontana and the University Hospital of Padua to pay compensation of over 300,000 euros, of which more than 230,000 to be paid by the Vicenza healthcare company, against the 52-year-old FF of Schio, who preferred to remain anonymous. The sentence came following a real odyssey that lasted three years at the end of which the man, the victim of multiple medical errors, in addition to having lost a large section of his intestine, will be forced for the rest of his life to perform his needs solids in a pouch that emerges from its abdomen.
The story began in May 2013 when, due to severe abdominal pain, FF went to the emergency room of the Alto Vicentino hospital in Santorso. Hospitalized and discharged with a diagnosis of suspected diverticulitis, the man waited three long months to undergo colonoscopy. The day after the examination, due to other very strong pains, however, he was hospitalized again with a diagnosis of intestinal perforation. For an entire year, FF underwent various operations and continuous treatments until he decided to go to a specialist hospital centre, the surgical clinic 1 of the University Hospital of Padua.
Here too hospitalizations and operations until 2015, when a terminal and definitive colostomy was performed, i.e. an artificial opening of the intestine to divert the flow of feces outwards, through the abdominal wall.
Other diagnostic and intervention errors, recognized by the court, which have irreversibly marked the life of the man, forced to live with an external bag where his feces converge.
Exhausted by the situation, the patient turned to a law firm to start a compensation claim. “Neither of the two health structures involved wanted to admit their responsibilities: it was not even possible to start a dialogue to enter into a negotiation”, the words of Massimo Gottardo, head of the Vicenza studio.
The two hospitals, having acted correctly and in compliance with the guidelines – the lawyers argue – would not have been responsible. This was the line of defence, rejected by the court which, on the basis of expert reports from specialists, held, on the contrary, that the doctors should have studied the pre-operative phase better and would have had alternatives to the extreme situation in which the pensioner is forced to live , now 62 years old.
#Intestine #perforated #colonoscopy #compensated #euros