The operation he was about to undergo Soledad Barrera It couldn’t take longer than 40 minutes. The woman, a 41-year-old pediatrician, had come to the SMI sanatorium in Montevideo for a planned routine procedure that does not pose any major risk beyond what is normally associated with a procedure requiring anesthesia. But Barrera had a strike along the way that left her in an almost vegetal state for ten months. until he finally died in August.
For weeks, the pediatrician – who had no previous illnesses – limited herself to sleeping, opening her eyes without seeing anything, reacting to an auditory stimulus and undergoing tube feeding (which often ended in vomiting). The Uruguayan newspaper reported on the case The country.
On the day of the operation, her mother, Rosario Barrera, accompanied her to the sanatorium and from outside the operating room she heard screams that caught her attention: “María Soledad, wake up”. A few minutes later the surgeon and anesthesiologist explained The patient had suffered a cardiac arrest.
The mother reported the case to the facility, the Ministry of Health (MSP) and also filed a criminal complaint. The criminal police speak against the anesthesiologist.
In late December 2023, while Soledad was still in a coma, her mother passed the anesthesiologist in a cafeteria, followed her to the elevator and confronted her. “I told her why she didn’t take care of things, that she destroyed my daughter’s life. She told me that she didn’t do anything, that it wasn’t the anesthesiologist’s problem and that she blamed the surgeon. I told her to start praying that she would find out the worst about me,” Rosario Barrera told Uruguayan media.
The anesthesiologist’s version is that “a thousand physiological things” happen during laparoscopic surgeries that may explain the extensive brain damage Soledad suffered. These events can be recorded “accompanying” cardiac arrest.
The investigation carried out by the MSP brought news this week. Based on a decision of the Public Health Commission, The country’s Ministry of Health ordered the exclusion “from practicing medicine” of the anesthesiologist involved in Soledad Barrera’s operationreported this Sunday The country.
“This patient and this low-risk anesthetic surgical procedure, if carried out correctly, is a preventable death.” says the resolution signed by the chair of the commission, María del Carmen Curbelo. The commission noted that the sanction imposed on the anesthesiologist is valid for a period of five years, plus a mandatory “professional reassessment by the Academic Department of Anesthesiology” of the University of the Republic once this period expires.
The duration of the woman’s cardiac arrest could not be determined with certainty because it was not recorded, the MSP investigation concluded.. Aside from that, “There is objective evidence for several “divisions” of the standards and the technical procedures that physicians must follow. For example, the anesthetist “failed to assess the presence and severity of possible brain damage as a result of the arrest or did it incorrectly.”
Another element that emerges from the investigation is that, as she herself admits, while under anesthesia she left the operation to go to the toilet. “for two different reasons.” He also left “without loudly notifying the rest of the team, which is appropriate.” She stated this, although the surgeons did not confirm this.
According to the investigation, the anesthesiologist did not follow protocol even in the crucial minutes after the operation. Instead of sending the patient immediately to the intensive care unit, he kept her in the recovery area after anesthesia for an “inexplicably long time.”
The case is being investigated in the prosecutor’s office by Fernando Romano, who has already questioned the actors involved in 2024, but the case has not received any major developments so far.
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