USR (Save Romania Union) MP Emanuel Ungureanu has filed a criminal complaint to the General Prosecutor’s Office on Monday in the case of the medical staff involved in the case of the patient who death following severe burns during surgery at the Bucharest Emergency Hospital Floreasca. The lawmaker asked prosecutors to start criminal investigation for committing the crimes of deceiving another, forgery, use of forgery.
A 66-year-old woman suffering of pancreatic cancer suffered severe burns on the operating table during surgery after the medical staff used an electric scalpel while the patient was treated with alcohol-based disinfectant, despite regular procedures.
The media reported that according to the information provided by a nurse, the hospital management and the inspectors who came from the DSP (Public Health Directorate) tried to cover the whole case, as the patient was a case handled by a renowned doctor, Mircea Beuran. It is unclear yet if doctor Beuran was in the operating room at the time of the surgery.
“The press release of the College of Physicians is shameful and defiant towards the victim and her family, which was informed about the incident in the operating room as being a minor incident. Apparently, for surgeon Mircea Beuran to burn 40 per cent of a patient’s body is a minor incident. I came to the Prosecutor’s Office today to ask the prosecutors to establish if the medical staff at the Floreasca Hospital who participated or coordinated the surgery, and we speak here of two surgical events, which took place on December 13 and 22, committed the crimes of deceiving another, forgery, use of forgery,” the USR deputy said while arriving at the General Prosecutor’s Office headquarters.
“After hearing the baffling statements made by physician Beuran, who explained that he did not take part in the surgical event, but he just falsely signed that he was in the room the whole time, also adding that he suspected the patient was allergic to iodine, when there was no such indication in the official medical papers or any evidence showing that such testings were carried out for an iodine allergy. We also don’t know if Professor Beuran was actually in the room during the surgery on December 13 or he just coordinated a medical team by phone, a medical team the members of which we don’t know anything. So all these are questions that remained without an answer, as the nurses and the auxiliary nurses and the stretcher-bearers were about to carry the blame for everything,” Emanuel Ungureanu added.
He accused the Floreasca hospital staff that they tried to cover this case. “There is the administrative investigation of December 22 initiated by physician Neagoe, the head of the Floreasca Emergency Hospital. Strangely, on that day, only the auxiliary staff was asked to make statements. No physician was asked to make any statement. On December 27, the Ministry of Health asked an inspector from the State Sanitary Inspectorate, who did not hear any of the physicians who were in the operating room, he did not hear anybody, in fact, he just took over the statements made on December 22 by the auxiliary staff. It is clear thus that they tried to blame the nurses and the auxiliary nurses,” Ungureanu argued.
The USR MP is the first who exposed the case of the woman who suffered from cancer and got burnt during a surgical intervention at the Floreasca Hospital. After several days in a coma, the woman died in hospital.
Ungureanu published on Facebook the statements in handwriting of two nurses who revealed the flames on the burning patient were extinguished with a wash-hand basin full of water. He claimed that, according to the information provided by a nurse, the hospital management and the inspectors who came from the DSP (Public Health Directorate) tried to cover the whole affair and they didn’t take any written statement from surgeon Mircea Beuran.
The case was also covered by The Guardian.