Abstract
Medical liability has become a fact of life in the physician’s modern practice and each malpractice claim gives rise to a scientific challenge. Under this scenario, the role of Legal Medicine is essential to prevent erroneous interpretations of scientific evidence and the medico legal expert should always be involved in cases of alleged medical liability on cadavers. Focusing on malpractice claims in the field of cardiology, the considerable complexity of the management of cardiac pathologies implies the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach, together with the application of a shared ascertainment methodology. In particular, it is essential for the medico-legal expert to collaborate with specialists, such as cardio-pathologists, cardiologists or cardio-surgeons in cases of alleged medical liability in the cardiologic field and to follow the guidelines which have been produced to assist the expert dealing with deaths reflecting cardiac disease, in order to prevent criticism of case analysis in medico-legal environments.
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Notes
- 1.
Guidelines = statements systematically developed to assist practitioner’s decision based on the best available evidence at the time the document was prepared.
- 2.
Protocols = rigid and predefined patterns of diagnostic and therapeutic operational behaviors.
- 3.
A medical error is defined as a violation of a rule shared by the national and/or international medical community. It can be classified into three types.
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Real error = a material error of omission or commission, due to violation of universal and/or epidemiological scientific laws, or of consolidated rules of experience and competence.
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Pseudo-error = an apparent error due to a general absence of scientific knowledge on a specific issue at the time of the event. It can also be related to an unpredictable and inevitable event.
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Conscious error = an error made by the healthcare professional in full conscience.
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- 4.
Non-observances of required rules of professional medical conduct are defined as the non-observance of the rules of scientific medicine as taught in degree courses and in specialization schools, which are permanently updated through the scientific literature, congresses and training courses. These rules are mainly orientative in nature and must be applied to each individual case, according to the diagnostic and therapeutic features of the clinical picture.
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Montisci, M. (2017). Forensic Pathology and Malpractice in Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. In: Ferrara, S. (eds) P5 Medicine and Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67092-8_8
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