Doctor sentenced to prison 12 months oldwith a 3-year suspension, for the death, due to negligence, of a patient, who suffered a myocardial infarction while driving his car, just one hour after he went to a Health Center for examination, complaining of pain suggestive of a cardiac episode.

“The heart attack was in progress“, said the district attorney, accusing the doctor that did not take the necessary medical actions to rule out the danger the patient was in, insisting that his problem was muscular.

The case was examined in the second degree by the Three-member Misdemeanor Court of Thessaloniki, which reduced the doctor’s sentence by 8 months compared to the first instance court and recognized an additional mitigating factor (that of subsequent good behavior, in addition to the earlier legal life he had received from the first court).

The doctor underestimated the situation

According to the indictment, the incident occurred in June 2017 in Skydra Pella, when the 63-year-old patient visited the local Health Center with symptoms of severe back pain and sweating.

The accused doctor on duty who saw him appears to have underestimated his state of health and limited himself only to asking the patient if he had done any strenuous work in the previous 24 hours.

The doctor decided categorically that the pain was muscularruling out that it comes from a cardiac problem, as described in the same indictment.

Without performing laboratory testssuch as for example a cardiogram, or to refer him to a hospital – since these tests could not be carried out at the Health Center – the same doctor gave the patient two intramuscular injections, advised him to take painkillers for two days and before he left, assured that the pain would pass in an hour.

Exactly an hour later however, according to the case file, the 63-year-old suffered a myocardial infarction while driving his car on the Thessaloniki-Edessa national road, as a result of which he lost his life.

In his plea, the defendant – a general practitioner – denied the act of manslaughter, stressing that there was no suspicion of a heart attack.

He defended the medical nature of the acts, stressing that he showed diligence and consistency in the evaluation of the incident, while stating that even if a cardiogram had been performed, it is not certain that the result would have been prevented.