Already five days before the death of Anna Giugliano, who arrived at the Humanitas emergency room in desperate conditions on the evening of March 19 last year, the hospital was “in possession of the health information, which would have required an immediate recall of the patient”. New twist in the investigation into the death of the 28-year-old, who died on March 21, 2023, thirteen days after a stomach reduction operation performed by the bariatric surgery staff of the Rozzano facility. The investigating judge Alberto Carboni rejected the prosecutor’s request for dismissal and ordered new investigations from prosecutor Valentina Mondovì, also on the basis of the elements included in the opposition to the dismissal presented by the girl’s family, assisted by the lawyer Simone Ciro Giordano.
For the judge, who therefore imposed “further investigations” on the investigators, some elements emerging from the documents are relevant: for example, that already on March 16 there were contacts between the patient, who died due to an abdominal infection due to a rupture at the level of the stitches, and the hospital. And that, on that occasion, the Humanitas healthcare staff who spoke to Giugliano did not ask her more in-depth questions about her state of health, for example whether she had pain in the operated area, despite the patient having stated that she had a fever “which persisted from the day before.”
According to the investigating judge, there are two profiles which are worth investigating further: on the one hand, “the information given to the patient at the time of discharge, regarding possible complications and the signs to pay attention to in the post-operative phase”. On the other hand, and perhaps this is the most important aspect, to specify the moment in which the doctors under investigation «became aware of the persistent feverish state and the pain from which Anna Giugliano was suffering, also in light of the fact that handwritten papers were produced in which the girl noted his temperature as early as March 15th.” So the investigating judge orders the prosecutor’s office to check whether there were telephone or email contacts with the doctors or the facility on the woman’s phone between March 10, the day of her resignation, and March 18. And to collect the testimonies of the sister and mother, and also of the Humanitas operator who carried out the telephone follow-up.
All in order to clarify, together with the rest, “to whom the information regarding the patient’s health status was communicated”.
For the family’s lawyers, in addition to Giordano, also the lawyers Luciano Pesce and Aniello Giugliano, “the death depended exclusively on the culpable management of the post-operative course”.
