Surgery was scheduled: just a few hours in the operating room to correct a congenital lung malformation. However, it went wrong: the surgeon mistakenly cut the little boy's aorta after mistaking it for a secondary blood vessel. It was a matter of millimeters, but it marked the fate of a ten-month-old baby.
After the tragedy, an investigation has been opened and four doctors are accused of murder, including the head of the Pediatric Surgery department at the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin. The director is accused of having entrusted the operation to a professional specialized in adult surgery -whom they are also investigating-. In addition, the prosecutor has also focused on the anesthetist and another doctor who were present during the intervention. According to the Prosecutor's Office, if the child had been monitored with a pulse oximeter, the error would have been detected immediately.
Two years have passed since the family, represented by the lawyer Michela Malerba, filed the complaint for the death of the child that triggered the start of a legal process that is yet to be defined.
The little one underwent surgery for this lobectomy on April 15, 2021. It is an operation that consists of the removal of a lung lobe. And during this procedure the surgeon severed the boy's aorta, according to the indictment. Unlike what happens with adults, in children, bleeding is slower, which is why no one on the team noticed anything until three and a half hours later, when the baby's vital values collapsed. At that time, other doctors tried to perform an emergency operation, but they could no longer do anything to save the little boy's life.
Initially, the investigation involved the nine doctors from the two teams who performed both interventions, but later the accusation was limited to the four professionals who participated in the first operation and the doctors who participated in the second intervention were exempted from responsibility for try to save his life.
According to experts, the little boy died due to the cut in the aorta that occurred during the lobectomy. And, furthermore, they ensure that the baby was not monitored by a pulse oximeter that kept blood oxygen saturation under control during the operation and this instrument would have allowed abnormal values to be recorded in the operating room. In addition, they consider that the operation, which is rare, should have been performed in a specialized center.
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