PERUGIA – In the operating room, everything stops before the surgery begins. The patient is not breathing well, the doctors find a two-centimeter insulin needle in his lungs. He will die in intensive care four days later.
It is the synthesis of the mystery of the death of Vincenzo Bosco39 years old from Nocera Umbra, joined at Santa Maria della Misericordia of Perugia for an intervention planned for months. A routine operation on the nose, a septoplasty to be done in day surgery, which took him to the otolaryngology operating room on April 22 and shortly thereafter to intensive care, where he died last Tuesday.
To clarify the terms of the affair, the prosecutor of Perugia has opened a file and ordered an autopsy for next Thursday, to identify with certainty the causes of death. From the call for the appointment of the medical examiner, signed by the deputy attorney Franco Bettini, six health workers from the Perugia hospital are being investigated. Four doctors – two anesthetists and two otolaryngologists – two of whom are still trainees and two nurses from the hospital of Perugia, for hypotheses of crime ranging from injuries to manslaughter. A due act, in the absence of evidence on the causes of the 39-year-old’s death, and at the same time a technical step that will allow the investigated health professionals to appoint their consultants to take part in the autopsy exam. To date, therefore, the Umbrian prosecutor has not formulated any charges for the doctors and nurses defended by the lawyers Maria Bruna Pesci, Ilario Taddei, Melissa Cogliandro, Giancarlo Viti and Riccardo Fasi.
According to what has been possible to reconstruct, the otolaryngology surgery has never even begun, suspended when the anesthesiologists realized the patient’s breathing difficulties, who did not saturate well. An X-ray and a CT scan revealed the presence of a thickening in the 39-year-old’s lungs and of a foreign body. A needle of about two centimeters, thin and very similar to those used for insulin injections.
Once that metal object was extracted, the patient was transferred to resuscitation, where he will die four days later from complications. A pulmonary embolism, perhaps, according to one of the first hypotheses leaked unofficially. A confirmation is expected from the autopsy, which will have the task of clarifying the mystery of that death. It has to be determined, in fact, if and to what extent that needle may have played a role in the death of Vincenzo Bosco. Also to be clarified how and when it ended up in his lungs and if the patient arrived at the hospital with that piece of sharp metal already stuck in his body. Responses also expected from the patient’s family members Nocera Umbrawho filed a complaint to request the ascertainment of the facts and of any responsibility.