A doctor was ordered to pay 194,000 euros per year to a young man who was 100% disabled from birth, because of a medical error.
Philippe Giardina, 14, has been tetraparesic since his birth on July 29, 2000. That day, in a clinic in Cagnes-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes), the childbirth turned into a medical error. Today, it is reached in the four limbs by a decrease in the possibilities of muscle contraction.
Asphyxia
For several hours, the gyneco-obstetrician tries to extract the baby, by hand and using spatulas. In vain – his head is badly positioned. He then decides to perform a cesarean section. According to the elements of the investigation, the baby is born without a cry, and it is “soft”. In a state of asphyxiation, he was transferred to intensive care. He will keep irreversible lesions. His life expectancy is now 44 years.
For the judges, Toufic Seklaoui committed “mistakes” which caused the handicap of the teenager. The doctor was acquitted at first instance in 2010, then convicted of unintentional injuries and tampering with evidence in 2012 – but he appealed. He is accused, among other things, of having falsified the medical record of the childbirth.
This new compensation decision is much more severe than the previous one, and it is a first in France. The obstetrician was ordered to pay an annual pension of 194,000 euros to Philippe Giardina, or 11 million euros in total. It will also have to pay parents nearly 2 million euros, as well as 7,300 euros per year.
Permanent medical care
The allowances are intended to cover medical costs, which are numerous. Because the young man requires total and permanent home care. He cannot speak, cannot feed himself or get out of his wheelchair.
“The wasted life is priceless,” says Sandrine Giardina, the teenager’s mother. I waited a long time for the doctor to ask Philippe’s forgiveness, I was ready to ask him to be his godfather ”. But the apologies never came.
Sandrine Giardina is now thinking of attacking the first experts, who initially concluded that Toufic Seklaoui was innocent. “The first reports affirmed that the lack of oxygen which handicapped Philippe was due to a fall of the baby after the delivery! says the family lawyer, on the Figaro website. The Giardina themselves had to seek second opinions ”. The doctor, who received a reprimand from the College of Physicians, is still practicing.
High compensation, rare accidents
This kind of accident remains quite rare in France. The MACSF, which insures a large part of health professionals, recorded 14 obstetric errors that led to the establishment or the doctor being called into question in 2013. “These claims relate to errors or delays in the diagnosis of fetal malformations, but above all the conditions of care for parturients (interpretation of the fetal heart rate, decision to extract, etc.) ”, we can read in the 2014 report of the insurance company. Obstetrics is in seventh position among the specialties that report the most claims (general medicine in the lead).
On the other hand, these declarations often give rise to particularly high compensation. Thus, among the three most compensated medical errors in 2013, two relate to childbirth (€ 2,256,684 for a midwife, € 1,771,197 for an obstetrician). In both cases, the babies retained irreversible cerebral palsy, which explains the magnitude of the amounts.
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