Professor Severino Iesu and his team acquitted, the team he made famous, together with the Professor Di Benedetto, Salerno cardiac surgery at a national level. The judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Salerno, Valeria Campanile, closed the proceedings for the death of a patient, an event that occurred in November 2022. The magistrate, in accepting the joint request of the prosecutor and the defense of the suspects, represented by thelawyer Federico Conte (defender of almost all doctors) and oflawyer Laura Ceccarelli (in defense of Dr. Giuseppina Fezza), has «found and certified the regularity and professionalism of the operators’ conduct on a medical-legal level, in compliance with the rule of judgement, strengthened by the Cartabia reform, that is to say the lack of a causal link between the operative intent, carried out according to science and conscience, and the patient’s death” we read in a note signed by the lawyer Conte. The victim’s family opposed the prosecutor’s request for dismissal the lawyer Agostino Allegro. In the note, Professor Iesu’s trusted defender also specifies that «it was the only criminal case pending in Salerno against the well-known heart surgeon who, in the meantime, unfortunately, has left the Ruggi of Aragon to take over the management of the cardiac surgery department of thePineta Grande hospital in Caserta». Together with Iesu they had ended up under investigation, and they too were acquitted of the charges, even the doctors Generoso Mastrogiovanni, Mario Colombino, Giovanni Ambrosino Di Miccio, Giuseppina Fezza.
THE MEASURE
The deceased patient had arrived at TRuggi’s cardiological hours from Eboli hospital where the doctors had diagnosed her with acute aortic syndrome: intramural hematoma of the ascending aorta.” Once she arrived in Salerno, the doctors revealed that the lady had most likely been the victim of a previous heart attack in the days preceding her hospitalization. As the situation degenerated, the woman underwent surgery performed by the doctor Mastrogiovanni who, after ten hours in the operating room, reported to the family that the diagnosis from the Eboli hospital was wrong and that the patient had a thickening of the aorta on a inflammatory. The doctor said that he had nevertheless carried out the operation by replacing the aorta with a prosthesis of a smaller size than was necessary since the operation had been carried out in emergency conditions, reporting that he had also inserted a by pass. After a few days, it was Professor Iesu who reported to the family that the patient’s right ventricle was not functioning, due to post-operative complications, and that she would be subjected to a second operation. But the woman got worse and she died. The autopsy revealed that the patient had died due to a “convergence of multiple and serious multi-organ impairments such as outbreak pneumonia which caused a series of complications”. The prosecutor’s consultants subsequently excluded the responsibility of the Eboli doctors while the “optimal execution” of the surgery on Ruggi would have made it possible to avoid the lady’s death. The doctors, therefore, according to the consultants of the Salerno prosecutor’s office, would have implemented, during the operation, “all possible measures, both pharmacological and mechanical, without obtaining the desired results”: The family consultant – writes the investigating judge – “he disagreed with the conclusions of his colleagues but did not add further points for investigation”.
Therefore “the existence of a causal link between the doctors’ conduct and the patient’s death remains doubtful”, writes the investigating judge. In short, there would be no “technical certainty that the optimal execution of the intervention would have allowed the subsequent outcome to be avoided” therefore “there are no technical elements that can constitute profiles of professional misconduct”. Hence the acquittal from the charges.
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