healthcare
The Hasselt criminal court acquitted the Jessa Hospital on Friday for unintentionally inflicting assault and battery resulting in the death of a woman. In mid-April 2014, the then 44-year-old woman ended up in the hospital on the Salvator campus with a gallbladder infection. After medical complications, she fell into a coma. She died on August 24, 2017 at the Sint-Ursula rehabilitation center campus.
The Jessa Hospital had pleaded for acquittal through lawyer Rudi Vermeiren, while the public prosecutor’s office had demanded a fine. The court ruled on Friday that the hospital could not be blamed, but the motivation for the acquittal is not yet clear.
The ex-husband of the deceased woman and her sister filed civil proceedings. After her death, the surviving relatives filed a civil complaint with the investigating judge, after which the Limburg public prosecutor’s office also initiated prosecution.
The prosecutor spoke of a collective error, of a lack of adequate medical organization, of a passive attitude in diagnosis and follow-up, but the three judges saw it differently. The hospital’s defense had disputed during the hearing that there was collective failure. ‘Just because one or two doctors do something incorrectly does not mean that the organization is not in order. No one was in the wrong place.”
Complications
The woman had undergone a gastric bypass in 2012. On April 14, 2014, she was urgently admitted for an acute gallbladder infection, after which an operation had to be performed to remove the gallbladder. An abscess or infection then developed at the connection with the residual stomach, resulting in peritonitis.
To ensure that she would receive nutrients, a venous catheter was inserted to administer the nutritional fluid. However, one of the three ends of that catheter punctured an artery at the collarbone. The ruptured vein allowed blood to enter the chest cavity and caused heart problems. The woman ended up in a coma and was transferred from the Salvator campus to the Jessa campus, where she was resuscitated.
Due to heart problems, the brain did not receive enough oxygen and the victim was left with severe paralysis. Three years later, on April 24, 2017, the mother would die. The autopsy showed a link between the death and the wrong procedure.
