An infective endocarditis that could have been treated with a series of antibiotics. This would have killed the journalist Andrea Purgatori, who died on 19 July last year. The news on what caused the journalist's death comes from the report of the Rome prosecutor's office, anticipated today by Corriere della Sera. The disease, the experts write in essence, has never been diagnosed but it would have been possible to eradicate it "with an effective antibiotic treatment", put in black and white the forensic doctors appointed by the Capitoline prosecutors to understand the causes of Purgatori's death and whether there are any There was negligence and oversight on the part of the doctors who treated him.
Purgatori's family declares itself "incredulous" of the doctors' work and underlines in a note how "the initial diagnosis of May 2023 by the prof. Gianfranco Gualdi by Dr. Di Biase and Dr. Colaiacono of numerous brain metastases was incorrect as was clear from the autopsy investigation." He also adds that the incorrect diagnosis was repeated despite «the continuous and serious ischemic episodes» and not only «diverted the therapeutic path of the real pathology» but «had very serious consequences, having led to immediate and important radiotherapy treatments on the entire brain at maximum power and intensity."
Last March 21, precisely to ascertain the truth about the death of the presenter of the Atlandide program, the investigating judge of Rome, as part of the investigation launched by the Prosecutor's Office and which sees four doctors under investigation for manslaughter, had entrusted the maxi expert opinion. As part of the evidentiary hearing, which had been requested in recent months by the prosecutors, the judge had also asked the specialists in charge to clarify the presence of metastases and to try to ascertain how and when the heart infection started.
The register of suspects includes the radiologist Gianfranco Gualdi, his assistant Claudio Di Biasi and doctor Maria Chiara Colaiacomo, both belonging to his team, and the cardiologist Guido Laudani, who treated Purgatori. The unrepeatable preliminary investigation had been requested by the Capitoline Prosecutor's Office in recent weeks in light of a consultancy that had been arranged to try to clarify the clinical picture of the journalist who died at the age of 70. The conclusions of the consultancy are cited in the request.
«In a nutshell», the investigation «highlights that the journalist, although suffering from metastatic lung cancer, died due to the consequences of an infectious endocarditis which induced widespread systemic embolization in the patient. This pathology - we read - was not identified in time to be able to promptly start the appropriate treatments, and precisely in relation to its omitted and in any case late diagnosis" the cardiologist was registered. In the consultancy requested by the prosecutor Giorgio Orano (signed by Luigi Marsella and Alessandro Mauriello) who, following the family's complaint, investigated the four doctors for manslaughter, we read that Laudani, writes the Corriere della Sera, «omitted the prescription of clinical, laboratory and instrumental investigations aimed at the diagnosis of infective endocarditis. In our opinion, these omissions are attributable to incompetence and do not comply with the good clinical practices identified by us in the literature".
«It would certainly have been appropriate – the experts note in the report – to carry out a set of blood cultures and request an infectious disease consultation. The indicated tests could have intercepted the pathogen responsible for the febrile events and infective endocarditis with a subsequent request for transfer to another facility." The report also excluded the presence of brain metastases indicated by Professor Gualdi and attacked with radiotherapy with problematic side effects.
(Unioneonline/D)
