Alghero, accused of manslaughter: two doctors acquitted
The patient presented to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain. Sent home, he later died of septic shock
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In 2018, a 90-year-old father showed up at the emergency room of the Civil Hospital of Alghero with his 42-year-old son, with disabilities, suffering from severe abdominal pain. The parent is his legal guardian and asks for help, but the emergency room doctor and the specialist surgeon disagree on how to deal with the emergency. The former wants the patient to be admitted to hospital, the latter prescribes some enemas and that the person return to the facility the following day. Meanwhile, the x-ray shows, among other things, " abundant ubiquitous coarse fecal residues with probable fecalomas ". The father follows the surgeon's instructions and returns the following day with his son and, on the same day - September 26, 2018, at his home, the 42-year-old dies due to, as the autopsy will show, "septic shock from massive fecal stagnation". So much so that the examination by the pathologists will reveal a stool content of 2 and a half kg in the digestive system .
The two doctors, the emergency room professional aged 58 and the other 71, are on trial for manslaughter because, according to the charges, they caused the man's death. Today in the court in Sassari the trial concluded in which the accusation was supported by the prosecutor Paolo Piras who had requested a sentence of one year and four months for the surgeon, asking instead for an acquittal for the other defendant. In the second case, the decision was also supported by the civil lawyers Gianni Spano and Stefano Carboni, who represented the two brothers of the deceased - their father has since passed away - but they focused on the alleged responsibility of the specialist.
Indicating him as the person who should have opted for hospitalization and surgery on the patient. The defense of the 71-year-old, lawyers Marco Costa and Rita Dedola, had a completely different opinion, according to which their client had behaved correctly. The younger doctor was assisted by the lawyer Elias Vacca while the civil responsible of the ASL was represented by the lawyer Renato Figari. At the end of the council chamber, judge Antonio Spanu acquitted both defendants because the fact does not constitute a crime.
