Miriam loved going to the pool to practice swimming, she loved taking long walks on the beach, she danced salsa, she loved traveling and, above all, she was passionate about practicing her profession: medicine. But since July 2021, his life has taken a dramatic turn because ended up confined to a wheelchair, following alleged medical malpractice by a neurosurgeon who was her classmate and who had operated on her for cancer.
“It broke my whole life“Miriam laments, having been forced to retire as a stomatologist and hand over to her daughter the famous clinic she ran in the capital of Valencia. “It devastated me so much that I looked for a way to commit suicide, but I didn’t do it for my two children and because I wouldn’t see my three grandchildren grow up”, as this retired doctor admits in an interview she gave to EL ESPAÑOL in condition of doing so with a false identity: Miriam.
The operation to remove a tumor from her spinal cord left her paraplegic and was the subject of legal proceedings opened – through criminal law – after the complaint filed by her lawyer: Ica Aznar Congost. “Now, I depend on a caregiver,” emphasizes this 66-year-old woman condemned to a wheelchair. “I didn’t file a complaint to get money“.
In fact, Miriam became paraplegic in the summer of 2021, but it wasn’t until December 2023 that she I undertookTO DO legal proceedings against this neurosurgeon assigned to the Valencia General Hospital who operated on her twice for the same tumor: an ependymoma which was lodged – more precisely – between the T5 and T6 vertebrae.
“I hadn’t reported him before because he was my classmate, but eventually I did because of the way he behaved towards me after the operation: he didn’t even tell me “I didn’t call to see how I was,” according to this sixty-year-old, regarding the alleged coldness shown by his professional colleague after finishing admitted to the National Paraplegic Hospital of Toledo. There, he had to undergo tough rehabilitation sessions, “to strengthen his core”, and learn to move around in a wheelchair.
Patients undergoing rehabilitation at the National Paraplegic Hospital in Toledo in an image published by the Castilla-La Mancha Health Service.
Miriam’s – not her real name -‘s daily life consisted of caring for her patients at the private dental center she ran in Valencia, but her career as a doctor, which dated back to 1981, began to collapse over the years. a routine dental consultation in rheumatology at La Fe hospital. This doctor treated psoriatic arthritis and during an MRI: They detected a cyst in the spinal cord.
“A fairly large picture appeared: a tumor of three centimeters by one with one“, as he explains. “They decided to do an MRI with contrast and they saw that it was not homogeneous, so there was a high probability that it was malignant. So every six months I had an MRI to see if the tumor was changing in size.”
This is indicated in the complaint filed by Ica Aznar Congost, a lawyer who collaborates with the Patient advocacy association in the Valencian Community: “To control and follow said discovery, they are planning a rsonance magnetic every six months. In this first and the next two, the cyst had not grown, it remained the same. The recommendation from La Fe Hospital until now has been to maintain expectant behavior and monitor the growth of the cyst, through the corresponding controls, to evaluate with their results whether to intervene or not.
-How did he end up on an operating table and in another center: the Valencia General Hospital?
– Myriam: At the third or fourth MRI I had to check the size of the cyst, the neurosurgeon at La Fe hospital told me that I should think about having an operation because the tumor was encapsulated in the spinal cord, could rupture and would spread very quickly. through the spinal cord, leaving me with only a few months to live. What worried me most were the consequences if I had surgery.
So I asked a classmate for a second opinion: a neurosurgeon from Valencia General Hospital who had worked in the United States and in the United States. Clinic of the University of Navarra. I deserved a lot of trust. I sent him a WhatsApp and he told me to come see him.
– What was this neurosurgeon’s second opinion?
– He made the operation very easy for me. He explained to me that if there were no complications, in a month I would be working in my clinic. I told him to have surgery because I was having my first granddaughter and I would like to hold her. So I had surgery on June 25, 2021, but coming out of surgery I felt a loss of feeling in my legs and I couldn’t notice when I had to pee, even though I could walk.
Archive image of a surgical procedure in a hospital in the Valencian Community.
This moment in history is the key moment for which the court must clarify whether or not there was medical malpractice on the part of Miriam’s classmate and neurosurgeon at Valencia General Hospital. All this because after his first operation, they detected that he had 3 millimeters of tumor left in his marrow and The removed part of the cyst was sent to the pathological anatomy department for analysis.in order to determine whether the cancer was benign or malignant.
“I started telling him that we should wait to see the results from Anatomy Pathology. because maybe we were surprised and the tumor was benign. But he told me no, that as soon as I had surgery, he would remove the remaining 3 millimeters of the cyst. “He insisted that I have a second operation.”
– Why did you want to wait for the result of this report?
– As I had a tumor in my marrow, they could not do a biopsy to assess whether it was benign or malignant and decide whether I should have surgery or not. In these cases, it must be opened to remove it, but with the part of the cyst that was removed during the first intervention, this pathological anatomy report made it possible to analyze the tumor and revealed that it was benign.
This report was dated July 13 and he operated on me on July 14, which shows he didn’t even open his computer to see my history. This report said it was a clear cell ependymoma: a benign tumor, I had no symptoms and there was no need for further surgery. I could have been treated with radiotherapy. But he insisted on removing the 3 millimeters of tumor. He operated on me after twenty days.
– What was the result of this second intervention aimed at removing the 3 millimeters of tumor remaining in the bone marrow?
– He used the ultrasound scalpel which bombards a lot and destroys the bone marrow. The evoked potentials dropped significantly and when I woke up in the ICU, I noticed I couldn’t move my legs. The neurosurgeon told me everything was fine because it was because my spinal cord was swollen, but it took him two days to come visit me in my room because he was dying of shame. They sent me home paraplegic. All three pathways were cut: the motor pathway, the sensory pathway and the sphincters.
Ica Aznar Congost, from the Bruna Abogados firm and collaborator of the Association of Patient Defenders of the Valencian Community.
For now, The neurosurgeon has already made a statement to a criminal court in Valencia. Lawyer Ica Aznar Congost, collaborator of the Association for the Defense of Patients and responsible for the private proceedings against the doctor who became paraplegic, affirms that “medical malpractice” occurred for various reasons: “An investigation is underway, but “We understand that there were several negligences during the patient’s second operation.
– What were these alleged negligences?
– Ica Aznar Congost: There was a lack of informed consent for this second intervention and a lack of information about the operation and its indication. We also argue that this operation was not appropriate and should never have taken place. And in any case, the patient should never have been operated on 20 days after the first operation, without informing her that the tumor was one of the so-called benign tumors and that there were more conservative therapeutic alternatives. Whether the surgeon knows the nature of the tumor or whether he did not observe the pathological report, in both cases: the intervention should not have been carried out.
A criminal complaint
In the criminal complaint, the firm’s lawyer Bruna Abogados argues that there is “serious professional imprudence” because the neurosurgeon “cuts the spinal cord” to her client. All this, after having submitted her to the second intervention on July 14, 2021: an operation that the aforementioned document underlines should not have taken place because the report of July 13 from the Pathological Anatomy Service reflected that It was a benign tumor and radiotherapy was an alternative treatment to the operating room.
This is reflected in the complaint: “In order to know the necessity or not of this new intervention, the patient insists that doctor ‘X’ wait until the pathological anatomy knows the nature of the cyst removed during the previous intervention, requesting even give him the results, to see if the tumor is benign or malignant, but he refuses to ask and insists on intervening as the only option. It doesn’t even check medical history if that report is already availablebecause yes, he was.”
“Doña ‘Miriam’ wakes up in the intensive care unit paraplegic. That day, after the operation, she discovered the results of the pathological anatomy and that the tumor was benign (ependymoma)… Iintervention was not necessary. “This procedure would not have been carried out if Doctor ‘X’ had followed the minimum standards of caution and had not placed a patient in the operating room to subject her to such a dangerous procedure, without knowing the outcome of the procedure. pathological analysis of the extracted cyst.
The doctor in question had to retire due to a disability rate of 87%. “Now I dedicate myself to making sweaters knitting for my three grandchildren”, according to Miriam, as one of the few motivations for her new life: dependent on a wheelchair and a caregiver. “I was a rocket and now I can’t do anything“.
