Turin, dies at 36 years old after heart transplant at Molinette hospital: investigation opened

The Turin prosecutor's office has ordered unrepeatable technical investigations to establish the causes of the death of Raffaele Miele, 36 years old, who died on October 1st at the Molinette hospital after having undergone a heart transplant. The investigation, coordinated by prosecutor Giorgio Nicola, is currently against unknown persons on the hypothesis of manslaughter. The assignment of the task to the technical consultants Matteo Attisani and Alessandro Cicchini has been set for next Wednesday.

The family members' complaint

The decision comes after the complaint presented by Miele's family, assisted by the lawyer Francesco Petruzzi of the Naples Court, who ask to ascertain any responsibility in the thirty-six-year-old's death. The family members ask in particular that it be verified whether the transplanted heart was in suitable condition and whether there were any signs of negligence, incompetence or errors in the treatment.

The words of the lawyer

"The family made the report because according to them there were inconsistencies between what the health workers told them several times", explains Petruzzi. The family members, adds the lawyer, opposed an autopsy carried out as an internal diagnostic test at Molinette, asking for the intervention of the judiciary. "We wanted there to be an autopsy ordered by the prosecutor's office as an unrepeatable technical assessment, not as a diagnostic assessment by the hospital itself carried out by the employees of those who, according to the family, had probably made mistakes", states the lawyer. Petruzzi had in the past refused the director of the U Cardiac Surgery Complex structure of the Molinette Hospital, Professor Mauro Rinaldi, when he was appointed consultant in the case of the death of little Domenico Caliendo, the two-year-old child who died at the Monaldi hospital in Naples after a heart transplant.