Accused of the death of a patient following a routine operation, two doctors from the Valais Hospital were cleared by the Valais justice system, giving the benefit of the doubt.
© Laurent Crottet/LMS
For Valais justice, the death of a 62-year-old patient in 2014 at the Valais Hospital was not due to medical error.
An intervention, a priori trivial, had been fatal to a 62-year-old woman on September 3, 2014 at the Hospital of Sion (VS). The drama was played when the tube placed in the trachea of the patient under anesthesia had been removed. A normal procedure, but which had become complicated to the point that the sexagenarian had suffered a cardiac arrest, before dying a few hours later.
The expertise had revealed that the assistant doctor, left alone with a nurse at the time of the facts, had omitted to connect a device allowing observation of possible complications during extubation.
The assistant and the senior doctor responsible for anesthesia were finally cleared by the Court of Sion. They did not commit negligent homicide. For justice, “it is impossible to affirm that the connection would have prevented the death”, since the respiratory problem is not retained as the proven cause of death. The doubt therefore benefited the co-accused, unable to explain the reasons for the death. The Court thus followed the indictments of the defendants’ lawyers.
Call not decided yet
For Judge Emmanuelle Felley, the senior doctor did not violate the rules of caution by leaving an assistant who was still inexperienced alone. The Tribunal even awarded him compensation of 2,000 francs for moral injury. The Court considered that an extubation by an unaccompanied person was an accepted and common practice at that time at the Valais Hospital.
During his argument, the deputy prosecutor, Marie Gretillat, had requested a 180-day suspended fine and 6700 fr. fine once morest the doctor responsible as well as 90 day-fine suspended and 1000 fr. fine for the assistant. The representative of the Public Prosecutor does not rule out appealing.
