“There is no doubt that Alejandro Cohn’s death was due to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy that occurred due to lack of oxygen in the brain.” With that phrase, the judge Facundo Ocampo This morning, with his verdict, he began to explain the responsibilities of the doctors accused of culpable homicide. For the magistrate, the victim, who was admitted to the Central Hospital of San Isidro due to a diabetic breakdown in the public road, suffered a “primary neglect” which led to his death. For this reason, he imposed prison sentences of up to three years and six months on three of the six accused by the prosecution and the complainant. The other three professionals were acquitted.
The head of the Criminal Court No. 4 of San Isidro sentenced the doctor Marcelo Rodrigo Toro Solano to three years and six months in prison and seven years of special disqualification from practicing medicine. The professional will be released until the ruling is final. In turn, Ocampo imposed a sentence of one year and eight months in prison for conditional execution and five years of disqualification from the registration of female doctors. Ana Sánchez and Carla Setti. They were all held criminally responsible for the negligent homicide of Alejandro Cohn.
The judge acquitted the doctors Martin Montagna, Maria Seijo and Maria Quiroga and ordered to open a criminal investigation to determine what the nurses’ conduct was. Nancy Flores and Erlith Valverde Riveraboth present on guard at the time of the young man’s admission to the municipal health center.
According to reports, Alejandro, 35 years old and younger brother of the renowned filmmaker Mariano Cohnentered the municipal hospital “Melchor Posse” on the night of July 27, 2015 after a diabetic episode which led him to stop his motorcycle to vomit on a street in the town of Martínez. Although he arrived at the scene “lucid and conscious”, two days later, and after being transferred to the Italian Hospital in the City of Buenos Aires, the young man presented brain death and a host of unexplained fractures and injuries. His death was confirmed at 8 in the morning on July 29.
The oral and public debate closed with the reading of the verdict after 9:20. It had begun on April 16 with nine doctors from the municipal hospital accused of culpable homicide and theft of evidence. they are Dario Campos, Marina Voggelin, Maximiliano Ragazzoliwho were acquitted in the previous hearing, and the doctors now convicted and acquitted.
For Judge Ocampo, doctors Toro Solano, Sánchez and Setti were in charge of the pits where Alejandro was admitted after the former transferred him with the ambulance without placing an IV. None of them provided the “adequate primary care“to treat the clinical emergency he was experiencing, and this led to the young man suffering a seizure that would later cause his brain death due to lack of oxygen.
The magistrate spoke of “38 minutes of defective attention” and that “nothing was done” of what the experts said had to be done for a decompensation condition in an insulin-dependent type 1 diabetic patient. “The neglect occurred from the ambulance until admission to the shock room“, he claimed.
“As stated [en el debate] “The director of the hospital, the doctors worked as a team, and all three were in charge of the pits,” said Judge Ocampo, adding: “Certainly the doctor who brings the patient is responsible, but that does not mean that the other doctors in the sector do not have responsibility. This lack of attention (…) contributed to the result. This primary lack of attention led to Alejandro Cohn’s decompensation and his subsequent death.”
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