Doctors at Milan clinic are investigated for alleged needless surgeries, some fatal
MILAN, Italy (AP) -June 10, 2008
Police said Tuesday the charges resulting from the investigation
of Santa Rita Clinic ranged from fraud to homicide.
Three of the doctors were arrested on suspicion of murder for
allegedly having performed on several patients "abnormal or
invasive surgeries, without taking into consideration the fragility
of the patients because of age or their medical condition," the
police statement said.
Police officials said five patients at the clinic are believed
to have died after suspected needless surgeries. A hospital
official was also arrested, police said.
Repeated calls to the clinic Tuesday afternoon went unanswered.
One man who said he was a patient told Italian state TV that he
was given a lung operation instead of thyroid surgery.
"When I awoke, I found these tubes under my armpit," Giovanni
Rizzitano said, pointing to his side as he was interviewed on state
TV Tuesday. "They had operated on my lung."
The head of thoracic surgery was among those reported arrested.
La Repubblica, a Rome daily, quoted Riziero Scocchetti, the
72-year-old brother of Maria Luisa Scocchetti, who died shortly
after lung surgery in 2006 at Santa Rita. The woman, 65, was dying
of breast cancer in the hospital, the brother was quoted as saying.
"I asked the doctors to let her die in peace," Scocchetti
said, according to the newspaper. "They reassured me that they
were doing everything to save her. Instead they operated on her
lung. But everybody knew she wasn't going to make it."
The newspaper quoted former patient Alfredo Scordo, 76, as
saying part of his lung and some lymph nodes were removed in 2005
while he was recovering from pneumonia in the hospital
"They cut open my back, four hours under the knife for a long
and painful surgery," Scordo was quoted as saying.
Police contend that the clinic doctored patients' charts so it
could obtain higher reimbursement for the costlier surgeries from
the Italian national and regional health service in 2005 and 2006,
for a total, police allege, of some US$3.8 million in extra money.
Italian news reports carried what were said to be transcripts of
wiretaps in which doctors sound eager to do expensive surgeries. In
one wiretapped conversation, a doctor reportedly cursed when told
that a 90-year-old patient had been rejected for lung surgery
because of breathing difficulties.