Cagliari, for 14 years with gauze in his stomach

Living for 14 years with a foreign body in the abdomen, suffering from severe pain from the beginning, undergoing an operation and discovering that someone at the end of the surgery had forgotten to remove a gauze. Summary of the health affair that sees the 71-year-old Francesco Sirigu as the protagonist, who entered Surgery at the Marino hospital on 10 October 2005 and forced to live with abdominal pains that became, at the beginning of 2019, so acute as to push him to return to the emergency room. This time at the university hospital, where he discovers that an object measuring 6x7 centimeters had been left in his stomach by mistake.

The quote

A "negligence" of the doctors, now claims the expert appointed by the civil judge Maria Grazia Cabitza in the lawsuit brought by the patient to Ats to obtain compensation for the damage quantified in 24,945.25 euros from the lawyers Matteo Vinelli and Gavino Tedde, in whose summons it is reconstructed a story in their opinion very clear. Sirigu was operated on May 18 17 years ago at the Marino hospital but immediately complained of "abdominal pain" which prompted him to perform various endoscopic checks. In January 2019 the symptoms worsened and forced him to three different hospitalizations at the Policlinico di Monserrato in January (twice, with a CT scan that reveals the presence of something in the abdomen) and in March, when (on the 12th) he underwent an operation to remove the foreign body. A "white gauze, partly macerated and divided into numerous fragments". Doctor Maria Francesca Rosa, a consultant appointed by the lawyers, states that she had been there since 2005, since no other operations have been performed on the 71-year-old Quartese: "It is evident that she was forgotten in the abdomen", he claims, "causing the patient a problem that lasted years "And" a biological damage of 7 percent ". And here is the summons and the claim for compensation.

The health company

Thesis rejected by the Ats through the former legal representative Giulio Steri and the lawyers Silvana Murru and Maria Barbara Perasso. According to them, Marino's doctors had worked with "the necessary diligence, in compliance with the laws and the rules of prudence and expertise", so they have "no fault": the surgery had been performed "successfully" and "without complications. ". No compensation, because the link between "the behavior of the doctors and the damage" is "missing". More: "It is not true" that Sirigu had not undergone operations since 2005, because in reality "he had been operated on at the Polyclinic on January 10" and therefore "in hypothesis" the gauze may have been "forgotten" at the time. After all, "symptoms and ailments appeared only 14 years after Marino's surgery".

The expert

But the surgeon Silvio Savoia, the judge's expert, believes that it is "acceptable that the gauze was forgotten in May 2005"; since then for 14 years Sirigu "had not been operated on", so the presence of the foreign body "can only refer to the first intervention". A "negligence", a "technical error" in an intervention performed "in a technically correct way". The biological damage is quantifiable in 5 percent. No impact on work. Now the judge just has to decide.

Andrea Manunza