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Sunday, January 05, 2003
CCMC ‘defends’ doctors
By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez
AS FAR as heads of the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) are concerned, doctors who attended to Joel Alcontin did not cause the 16-year-old boy’s death.
Dr. Rodolfo Bigornia, who heads the new CCMC management team formed by Mayor Tomas Osmeña, said the attending surgeon, Dr. Michelle Villanueva, even exercised prudence when she decided not to proceed with the operation when anesthesiologist Belinda Faviola noticed that Alcontin’s heart rate had gone down.
“It was very prudent in her case. She could have been blamed for the patient’s death had she proceeded with the operation. It would have complicated things more,” Bigornia told reporters yesterday.
However, Bigornia said he has yet to receive the recommendations from CCMC in-charge Dr. Lydia Salarda before they will act on the matter.
From the autopsy report, he said, it can already be determined if the doctors can be held criminally or administratively liable for the incident.
Salarda hoped Alcontin’s parents understood the cause of their son’s death since Villanueva and Faviola already explained it to them.
Alcontin died of respiratory complications and adverse drug reaction even before he was operated on.
His parents brought him to CCMC on New Year’s Eve after firecracker splinters injured his left eye, and doctors wanted it removed to save him.
Bigornia explained that the pneumonia did not cause Alcontin’s death but it was “contributory.” The patient was believed to have experienced spasms caused by the anesthetic.
“It could happen even in the best care,” he said.
The injured eye, he added, had to be removed or the other eye could have been infected, causing more complications.
Alcontin’s parents were surprised by his demise since they saw that he was well before he was wheeled inside the operating room.
The boy’s mother Marcelina denied that her son had pneumonia although she admitted he had colds two days before New Year’s Day.
Salarda said that even if the boy had pneumonia, a fact the Alcontin couple did not reveal to the doctors, the antibiotics given to him prior to the operation helped improve his condition.
(January 5, 2003 issue)
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