“The pacemaker was the other way around,” a two-year-old dies. 8 doctors of the Child Jesus investigated

Little Giacomo was only a few hours old when he ended up in an operating room for the first time. It was September 15, 2016 and from that moment began his agony. A series of medical errors that led to his death. Only two years. For this reason, today eight doctors from the Bambino Gesù hospital are being investigated for involuntary homicide. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in which the judge will order an expert opinion to establish what really happened, and to understand if, as the prosecutor Daniela Cento thinks. , specific criminal responsibilities towards doctors can be identified.

It all begins in Taormina: where Giacomo was born with a heart problem and immediately underwent surgery at the Mediterranean pediatric cardiology center of the Bambino Gesù Hospital in San Vincenzo. According to the prosecutor, the three doctors who operate on him make a very serious mistake: they implant the pacemaker face down, face down. This causes a kind of loop that contracts his pulmonary artery and causes “acute cardiocirculatory failure.” The family knows nothing and Giacomo returns home. But as he grows, the rope tightens tighter and tighter and his condition worsens.

In April 2018, the little boy arrived in Rome, the Baby Jesus again, and the two cardiologists who visited him did not understand the seriousness of the situation and delayed the examinations. So we arrive in September: once again, the cardiologist finds some problems, but fixes the CT scan two months later. In December, the two white coats who examine him do not recognize the urgency of an intervention. They fix it a few days later, but then put it off because the baby has an infection. Before Christmas, a new visit and a new cardiologist: once again the seriousness of the conditions is underestimated, and the boy is sent home despite his mother’s insistence. We arrived on December 31: Giacomo is very serious. He is transported in a military plane to the capital. It will only be operated the next day. The two doctors who perform the surgery, according to the prosecution, not only do it “in macroscopic delay”, but they are wrong in the procedure. It is January 1, 2019, two days later the baby stops breathing.

According to the prosecutor, each of the doctors who treated him worked with “negligence, recklessness and inexperience” and contributed “to causing the death of the child.” “The trial will not serve to alleviate the pain of those who loved little Giacomo, but it will be necessary to ensure any responsibility, preventing similar tragedies from occurring in the future,” says lawyer Domenico Naccari who defends the family.