The Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) has condemned the Ministry of Health for the death of a 45-year-old patient on January 28, 2020. The woman, who was treated at the Doctor Peset University Hospital in Valencia for bilateral pulmonary thromboembolism, died from lack of treatment against thrombosis in a previous entry.
As explained in a statement by the Patient Advocate association, in charge of defending the family, the Valencian woman suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus, hypertension, obesity and Sjögren’s syndrome, in addition to suspected antiphospholipid syndrome. In December 2019, the woman was admitted to the hospital with leg weakness, headaches and bone pain. The previous pathologies he had increased the risk of suffering clots in the leg (deep vein thrombosis) or in the pulmonary artery (pulmonary thromboemolism). The clinical solution is clear: a heparin prophylaxis treatment low molecular weight (LMWH), but the doctors did not apply it.
In January 2020, he was admitted to the Doctor Peset University Hospital again, where he died on the 28th. The autopsy determined that the cause of death was a bilateral pulmonary embolismwhich could have been avoided with the therapy that the doctors denied. The Ministry of Health partially recognized its responsibility in 2023, but for the family it was not enough and the daughters appealed the resolution of the Valencian Government.
The TSJCV has now considered it proven that the failure to administer heparin prophylaxis is a action contrary to the lex artis (good practice). It emphasizes that treatment was mandatory for a patient with such a high level of risk and that the omission was the clear cause of death. The magistrates have set 100,576 compensation to daughters.
The Patient Advocate considers the sentence “unprecedented” since this court routinely applies the loss of opportunity theory. This legal construction compensates the loss of a certain and real possibility of obtaining a benefit or avoiding perjury. In practice, this usually results in reduced compensation, as the outcome of the treatment can never be fully determined. In this case, the Ministry had reduced the compensation to 35% of what the family requested, 54,156 euros, but the court has considered that the loss of opportunity lacked scientific and legal basis.
The ruling includes the arguments of the patient’s expert, a doctor specializing in hemostasis and thrombosis, who defended that even assuming that it is not possible to know the real risk of thrombosis, she was a high-risk patient. Furthermore, the Valuation Commission had established a 65% mortality rate for patients treated with LMWH, something that the doctor considers “flatly unreal”.
“If true, it would mean an incredible mortality rate of 65% in patients with the same circumstances cared for in the best possible conditions, a fact that is absurd. No hospital treats these types of patients with the result of something more than 6 deaths out of every 10 treated. Therefore, the calculation of loss of opportunity is irrational,” he states in the ruling.
