Compensation for damages due to heart surgery that developed into an infection

General living conditions have greatly improved, and scientists assure that until the age of 75 a healthy person cannot be said to be old.

In fact, what until a few decades ago was the so-called third age is now often a turning point.

With retirement comes also a lot of free time and the willingness to start new experiences.

Increasingly clubs and courses are organized specifically for those who decide to promote their previously hidden interests due to work or family commitments.

From reading to painting, trips and sweet gymnastics courses, or simply the taste of taking care of one's physique more carefully are now goals within the reach of many 70-year-olds.

A lady from Avezzano, in good health, is at this stage of life where she loves to devote energy to grandchildren, children but also to themselves.

Heart operation

The small heart problem that she has managed to keep under control all her life, at the age of 72, will have to be solved once and for all. This is not particularly serious, but it still requires hospitalisation and surgery; after that she can return to her daily chores and meetings with friends.

For this reason, when the set day arrives in the autumn of 2015,the lady goes to the hospital in Rome that keeps her in treatment, accompanied by her son.

Therminates acceptance, enters the room greeting his companions and sits on the bed after calmly accommodating the bedside table and locker.

The surgery is scheduled for the next day, the routine exams seem fine and there is no reason to fear a fate that instead decided to leave its mark.

Upon the arrival of winter season, it is quite common for the first flu symptoms to begin to meander.

Some patients in the cardiac surgery department, present during the stay of our lady, are struggling with the flu that in some cases have turned into fatal diseases.

After going under surgery, the lady faces a bad post-operative course and within a few days she returned again under surgery.

The operation is necessary because the lady’s lungs are full of fluid that makes her unable to breathe.

For almost two months the lady remains hospitalized and doctors relates her disease to nosocomial infection; on the fiftieth day of hospitalization, the lady is killed byseptic shock (Klebsiella pneumoniae infection).

The family is in shock

The family members were certainly not prepared for the worst.

They notedas an abnormality that immediately after hospitalization their beloved could not breathe well and had such a high fever.

The powerlessness that dominated them, not knowing the cause of such a worsened health, has further fuelled their desire for justice.

They could not resign themselves to having lost a lady who still had so much to give, always full of energy and positivity, ready to look after her grandchildren as often as they needed her and to take care of the children who, although growing up, never stop needing the maternal figure.

It is unthinkable for family members to accept the situation without attempting to shed light on the causes of the infection.

If it ever turns out that death was due to ill health, all that remains to be done is to obtain justice in order to alleviate the pain.

Damage Assessment - Klebsiella pneumoniae Infection Attorney

Family members reach a lawyer experienced in compensation resulting from the damage to health and life due to incompetence and medical negligence.

They point out that the death should not be related to the woman’s health stateneither to the type of intervention to which she underwent.

Having to prove the fault of the professionals who looked after the woman, it was necessary to rely on a coroner able to assess the situation explaining whether the disease could reasonably lead to death and ascertaining any elements of responsibility in the hospital management of the hospital.

The judicial process has been long and tiring, with the hospital trying in every way to attribute the cause of death to the natural, albeit rare, course of a cardiosurgical operation.

Pierced aorta and the klebsiella pneumonie infection

The report did not leave a way to the hospital which is condemned to record compensation by the Court of Rome in favor of the family members.

A total of 843.000 euros to compensate for the loss of a still vital lady who arrived at death after almost two months of agony.

The coroner showed that death is due to incompetence and negligence of the health professionals.

And in fact, during the second operation in her abdomen, doctors pierced her pulmonary aorta.

In the following period, the woman contracts an infection with klebsiella pneumonie that turned into septicaemia. His body can't cope with the stress caused by the bacterium's aggression and succumbs to septic shock.

The lady was admitted without any evidence of ongoing infections but just few days after entering the hospital, the blood values were strongly altered.

According to the expert appointed by the Court, there was no evidence that the hospital had taken all the necessary precautions to minimize the risks of an infection against a patient who still had weakened immune defences.

The hospital itself typed the killer bacterium

Paradoxically, the lady who lost her life in the Roman hospital, comes from the same Region that isolated and typed for the first time in Italy the killer bacterium that killed her, klebsiella pneumoniae.

Thanks to this discovery developed by researchers from an University, it was possible to save another patient hospitalized in the capital who was in a very serious condition due to the formidable resistance of the bacterium to all available antibiotics.