The Valencia court is investigating whether a 60-year-old woman died at La Fe Hospital in April 2022 due to a possible drug overdose after a heart transplant where he recovered properly.
In the procedure, which was archived at one time but reopened to continue the investigation by order of the Court, one person can be seen being investigated.
The case stems from a complaint from the family of the deceased, defended by lawyer Ignacio Grau, of Rocabert & Grau Abogados, last December, in which he warned that a nurse de La Fe committed the alleged crime of homicide due to serious professional negligence by giving the patient an overdose of medication.
The woman underwent a heart transplant in February 2022 due to symptoms similar to a heart attack. The operation was successful and a few days later he was transferred to the cardiovascular surgery hospitalization ward to continue his recovery.
At one point, as stated in the complaint in connection with a medical report, the patient was prescribed a drug, an antiviral used for the prevention of CMV infection -a type of herpes virus- and is also prescribed if you have received a solid organ transplant from a donor infected with this virus.
In March, an “unidentified” nurse, “wrong” – always according to the complaint – gave the medicine to the woman. The medical report states that the dose given is 60% higher than the equivalent to the patient and that in the event of an overdose, the woman may show multi-organ failure, “in addition to being administered intravenously when it should be orally,” the letter continued.
On the same day it was decided to admit the woman to Resuscitation and the change in the service report included: “Reason for admission: 60-year-old female patient – 46 days post heart transplant -, admitted from hospitalization ward due to acute respiratory failure.” in the context of the wrong administration of oral medication intravenously. After this, the patient died on April 2.
In the same complaint, it is regrettable that the medical history of the deceased did not include the identification of the nurse “who made the mistake” or the doctor who prescribed the medicine. nor was any investigation opened. “In other words, there is no record that anyone has done anything to find out why a young 60-year-old woman died because of a serious mistake,” he warned.
Archive and reopen
This procedure was temporarily archived by the court but the family of the deceased appealed to the Court, a body that, in June 2023, after studying the documentation, decided to revoke the resolution of the lower court and ordered the continuation of the case.
The Prosecutor’s Office also requested that the appeal of the family be continued due to its content and the provided medical report, which appreciates that there are signs of the possible creation of at least one. reckless injury crime which reason it requested to implement the appropriate procedures to identify the person who mistakenly gave the medicine, as seen in the resolution of the Court.
In their appeal, the family alleged a violation of the principle of hearing because the file was agreed upon without going to the party or the prosecutor’s office and they were not given time to make allegations about the forensic medical report or propose a counter-evidence; errors of judgment in the report; and data retention in hospital-provided documentation.
The court decided to respond to these reasons by appreciating that the reported facts are subsumable, ‘ab initio’, to a crime of reckless homicide or, at least, to a crime of damages caused by serious and/or professional negligence, “which, as in “This, the two expert reports are the same,” he explained.
In this way, and considering that the investigation of the reported facts is necessary, the court is ordered to continue the investigative procedures requested by the complaining party and the prosecutor’s office, “given the method of preferential processing given the delay which it has undergone.” it is shown. This week there will be more testimony in court.
