She may have been killed by staphylococcal food poisoning, after eating some slices of a salami that she kept in the fridge, in the house in Cagliari that she shared with a roommate. Nicoletta Manconi, the twenty-four-year-old medical student who died a month ago, was taken by ambulance to the emergency room of the Santissima Trinità with stomach pain and vomiting, and was discharged shortly afterwards. A few hours later, with the situation worsening, there was a new desperate emergency rush to Brotzu, where, however, there was nothing more that could be done.

The prosecutor's investigation

The deputy prosecutor Andrea Massidda, who received the file opened immediately by his colleague on duty Gaetano Porcu, asked that food hygiene specialists assist the medical examiner Matteo Nioi, after the autopsy which had found the death due to decompensation cardiac. The turning point came after some analyzes carried out by the young woman's mother, Maria Giovanna Battasi, a family doctor from Orgosolo, who, assisted by the lawyer Herika Dessì, searched the fridge and pantry of the house in Cagliari where her university daughter, discovering that a salami that the student would have eaten the day before had a frightening concentration of bacteria.

The doctor mother

Dr. Battasi's heart is devastated by pain, but she remains a doctor first and foremost. And as a doctor he wants to understand first of all what killed his daughter, taken to the Santissima Trinità hospital on the evening of September 24th. The register of suspects - after the manslaughter case opened by prosecutor Porcu - included the doctor on duty at the emergency room who would have examined and then discharged the girl, who died a few hours later. Convinced by her daughter's symptoms that it could be food poisoning, Maria Giovanna Battasi armed herself with patience and had what was in the fridge and pantry examined. The samples of a salami (with expiry date 11 November 2023) analyzed by the "Nuoro Chemical Laboratory srl" ascertained the presence of "coagulase-positive staphylococci" in a frightening quantity: the maximum threshold should be 1000, but there were 3 million and 100 thousand. The communication to prosecutor Massidda was immediate and he brought in the food hygiene experts.

The autopsy

The autopsy examination on the girl's body was carried out shortly after her death and lasted over five hours. The specialist Matteo Nioi, appointed by the public prosecutor Gaetano Porcu, had ascertained that the girl had not died from peritonitis or fulminant appendicitis, hypotheses that had initially circulated, but due to heart failure. In order to understand what caused it, the histological tests still being examined by the expert are essential. Nicoletta Manconi arrived by ambulance at the emergency room around 6pm on Sunday 24 September, in code yellow: she was vomiting and had severe abdominal pain, apparently in her stomach. After a vein therapy, apparently an IV, the patient was sent home with the diagnosis of gastroenteritis. A few hours later, however, the student felt ill again and her condition worsened, so much so that her mother-doctor also left Orgosolo immediately. The young woman died after a new mad rush to hospital, this time at Brotzu, where the student had arrived in desperate conditions. The prosecutor had investigated the doctor on duty at the Santissima Trinità, Dr. Sebastiano Patti (defended by the lawyer Stefania Cossu), while the family had appointed the medical examiner Maria Rita Pittau as their expert. Now the turning point, with the hypothesis of food poisoning that the Prosecutor wants to investigate after the report and investigations by the girl's mother.

Francesco Pinna

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