A court in Madrid has told the Dénia Hospital’s insurance company to pay a 63-year-old patient €483,000 for a mistake and a delay in identifying arterial ischaemia, which caused the amputation of his right leg. The decision says that an ultrasound scan done while he was in the Emergency Department could have stopped the amputation. The hospital in the Marina Alta area has to pay the afflicted patient €389,011 in damages and €94,000 in interest on top of that.
The case goes back to when the management of Dénia Hospital was sold to a private company. The injured person’s lawyers sued Berkshire Hathaway Speciality Insurance, the insurance company for Marina Salud, the centre’s concessionaire, for medical malpractice because they misdiagnosed arterial thrombosis and caused a delay in getting the right diagnosis.
On March 6th, 2023, the patient went to the Emergency Department at Dénia Hospital because his right forefoot hurt so much. Even though there were several clinical signs that a Doppler ultrasonography was needed, only blood tests were done during the evaluation, and he was sent home with a diagnosis of “deep vein thrombosis.”
Hours of “unbearable pain”
He went back to the hospital hours later because the pain was too much to take. There, he had the necessary diagnostic tests done, which showed that the first diagnosis was wrong: he had arterial ischaemia and could not have his right lower limb revascularised because too much time had passed. The ruling says that this medical mistake caused his right leg to be amputated above the knee.
Lawyers Ica Aznar Congost and Juan Carlos Montealegre Bello from the Legal Services of the “Patient’s Advocate” Association said in a press release this Thursday morning that the “most outrageous” part of this case is that the test that would have stopped the amputation of the patient’s leg is a “simple ultrasound,” which is “a very simple test available in any hospital.”
They didn’t have any resources
But they didn’t do the test since they didn’t have the money. The report from the Dénia Hospital’s emergency department, which was written by the chief of the service, said that this centre does not give ultrasonography services after noon. All three specialists agreed that doing the arterial or venous Doppler ultrasonography test on the same day would have led to an accurate diagnosis and the right treatment.
Because of these reasons, the lawyers asked for money to buy a biomechanical prosthesis that would let the patient do the same things he could do before the amputation. However, the court only allowed the amount for a standard prosthesis, which, according to the defence of the affected party, “he cannot enter the water nor is it compatible with the sand of the beach.”
Author: Derek Appleton
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