A CT scan would have been enough to save Elena’s life. The family members of the little girl, who died at just 3 and a half years old on 11 January 2023, after three hospitalizations in Naples hospitals, are convinced of this. Assisted by the lawyer Enrico Ricciuti, the little girl’s parents and grandparents agreed opposed to the request for dismissal, advanced by the Naples Prosecutor’s Office, focusing on various aspects. First, it is the thesis put forward by the family consultants, the little girl underwent a CT scan late which, if carried out immediately, would have revealed the true cause of his illness and that stomach ache, linked to a volvulus – a twisting of the operable intestine – which caused an intestinal infarction. And again the family consultants focus onmisdiagnosis of childhood diabeteswhich led to the transfer of the little girl from Santobono to the old Vanvitelli polyclinic in a specialist department where, however, there was no intensive care and the first of three cardiac arrests occurred.
Little Elena’s ordeal lasted two days, during which the little girl was hospitalized three times and, in less than 40 hours, he suffered three cardiac arrests, until his death. Initially hospitalized for a suspected stomach ache, the little girl was subjected to some tests which led the Santobono doctors to hypothesize diabetes problems. Transferred to the second facility, the little girl went into cardiac arrest and was urgently transported back to the pediatric hospital. There, with the clinical picture now compromised, the little girl died a few hours later, after suffering two further cardiac arrests. According to the prosecutor’s consultants, the diagnosis was wrong, but the little girl would not have been saved anyway.
The family’s consultants have an opposite opinion and have appointed surgeon Mario Lima, Director of the Specialization School of Pediatric Surgery at the Sant’Orsola Polyclinic in Bologna, as consultant. Now the family members have asked for further information because, the parents say, “only in 6% of cases does one die from an abdominal infarction, it was enough to perform a CT scan and operate on the child“.
The Chamber of Commerce hearing is scheduled for Tuesday before the preliminary hearing judge of the Naples court to discuss the matter.
