At ‘Storie Italiane’ the dramatic story of little Marco, who was operated on after 46 days for a non-existent tumor
Marco he was a healthy newborn, with no health problems. Alone 46 days to live undergoes an extremely invasive operation, following a diagnosis that will prove to be erroneous. The doctors were in fact convinced that the newborn had developed a brain tumor. Hence the decision to submit him to a craniotomy, i.e. an operation which consists in opening the patient’s scalp to extract what was believed to be a tumor mass.
An intervention, however, probably too invasive, as well as useless. At the end of the investigations then taken, it was understood that the doctors removed the healthy brain material. So it wasn’t a tumor. A medical error that led a previously healthy child to a tetraplegiathat is, a paralysis involving all four limbs and the torso. Marco could neither speak, nor walk, nor control his head. All the result of brain damage caused.
Marco from that operation began a real ordeal, during which the little one was constantly hospitalized in various Italian hospitals. The episode dates back to 2005. Nine years of life lived by the little one, until the moment in which, in 2014, Marco died.
‘Italian Stories’, the drama of little Marco
“How was it possible for this child to be operated on for a non-existent tumour? It is something paradoxicalThis is how Eleonora Daniele, presenter of ‘Storie Italiane’, the TV program that dealt with the case, comments on the story. The live interview with Marco’s parents, Barbara and Valerio. The child’s mother had left her job to take care of the son Nine long years of struggle.
“He was a special child and gave us everything, even if he couldn’t hold his head. He had to be treated constantly. His death dragged us into grief, but now we have other challenges before us. This is what we have to accomplish, trying to have the truth“says Barbara.
A technical consultancy from the Ferrara court acknowledged the responsibilities of the doctors who intervened at that moment. The child underwent a craniotherapy perhaps too invasive for his very young age. An external drainage would also have been possible, which would have removed the liquid that was thought to have been created by the tumor from the little one’s skull.
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