A judge in Alicante sentenced two paediatricians to two years and one year in prison, respectively, for carelessness in the death of an 8-year-old child who died of peritonitis after visiting the emergency room five times in less than four days in October 2020.
According to the ruling of Alicante Criminal Court No. 2, paediatrician MRR of Elda Hospital has been sentenced to two years in prison for homicide due to gross negligence in the death of little Aitor from acute appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis, as well as a three-and-a-half-year special disqualification from practicing medicine.
MBS, the health centre paediatrician, receives a one-year prison sentence for the same homicide charge owing to gross negligence, and she is forbidden from practicing law for three years.
The original mother had transferred custody of Aitor to his grandma and her companion. All three are represented by Raquel Sánchez Navarro’s law company and will be reimbursed €114,203 for the former and €32,629 for her partner and mother, according to a verdict that can be challenged in the same court within 10 days.
Events
The incidents occurred on October 24th, 2020, when the small boy, Aitor EG, began to experience abdominal pain at the family home in Petrer (Alicante), where he lived with his maternal grandmother and her boyfriend, who had been given custody by the mother, and they took him to the town’s health centre.
He was then directed to the adjacent Elda Hospital, where he was diagnosed with abdominal pain without warning indications, as well as vomiting caused by the likely development of a virus. The hospital discharged him. However, the vomiting persisted, so his grandparents took him back to the outpatient clinic on the 26th.
He was referred back to the same hospital, where the accused paediatrician, MRR, neglected to disclose various symptoms in her report, such as a heart rate, and did not order tests such as an abdominal ultrasound or the requisite blood test.
Two days later, on the 28th, early in the morning, due to the persistence of the pain, the grandparents returned little Aitor to the Petrer clinic, where the second defendant, also a paediatrician MBS, did not perform a physical examination or take his vital signs, blood pressure, or heart rate.
He did provide IM Buscapina Compositum, which is not normally indicated in paediatrics, and despite his “serious condition,” he did not refer him to the hospital, increasing his chance of death by 70%.
The ruling finds it imprudent because little Aitor was not given the complementary tests that should have been performed, especially when a patient is referred from a health centre to the hospital, because the judge believes that in these cases, some complementary action is required, and even more so if “the minor had sufficient symptoms to suggest that he could have appendicitis.”
In terms of compensation, the verdict holds the insurance company Berkshire Hathaway European civilly accountable, as well as the Ministry of Health on a subsidiary basis, while costs are split equally between the two defendants.
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