Elisa Pallotta Topics Covered
La prosecutor of Rome asked the indictment for four doctors accused of the death of Andrea Purgatori, journalist passed away on July 19, 2023The charge, for them, is manslaughter.
The Death of Andrea Purgatori and the Misdiagnosis
According to the prosecution, Purgatori died because of serious medical errors, including an incorrect diagnosis and therapy. Andrea Purgatori would not have died if he had been treated immediately due to theheart infection presented. The journalist was undergoing treatment for lung cancer, and had undergone radiotherapy following the hypothesis of brain metastasis, although the autopsy revealed that those metastases were not there. Purgatori had instead been struck by a infective endocarditis.
The investigators' hypotheses
Investigators hypothesize that, if this had been well treated, it would have allowed the journalist to live much longer. For this reason the prosecution spoke of 'incompetence, negligence and imprudence' in the treatments to which the doctors had subjected him. According to the experts, an antibiotic would have been sufficient to cure him Purgatories byendocarditis. The doctors who were treating the journalist, instead, were treating him for brain metastases, subjecting him to radiotherapy that had weakened him, until death came. It was the autopsy that would give confirmation of the fact that there was no one present brain metastasis, and that Purgatori's cause of death was untreated infectious endocarditis.
The hearing and the doctors under accusation
The crime of manslaughter is contested against the radiologist Gianfranco Gualdi, his assistant Claudio Di Biasi and the doctor Maria Chiara Colaiacomo, both belonging to his team, and the cardiologist Guido LaudaniThe preliminary hearing will be held on September 19.