• Events: Drowned after refusing help and hanging up the phone Summa 112's doctor: 'I don't hear you drowning'

Last August 23 was going to be the dream day for Lina Betancourt , a 23-year-old Colombian, mother of a three-year-old girl. The breasts were going to be finally operated, to increase their size, and there she was with her best friend, Isabella, both at the Hospital October 9 in Valencia , taking the photo that accompanies these lines, to hang it on social networks. The image was taken at 11.50 am, just before Lina was finally taken to the operating room, in the surgery she had contracted in the Dorsia chain.

After the smiles and a hug, Isabella went to the waiting room, and waited. It was going to be just 45 minutes, they had been told. When an hour had passed, the young woman began to get impatient . Another hour passed. And then another. At 3 pm, with the girl very alarmed, a doctor finally went out to talk to her. He seemed agitated. "Are you familiar with Lina?" "No". "Well, call your relatives, something has happened" -said Isabella Sánchez now.

Lina, who had only warned that her grandmother was going to be operated, an accomplice in the decision and a financier when covering her expenses in Dorsia, was already at that time with "80% of the dead brain" , says her father, Leonardo .

The 43-year-old man, now working in Holland, had told his daughter many times that "she didn't need that," that "it was fine as it was." "Besides," he recalls now, "it's not because I miss Spanish health, but in Colombia, cosmetic surgeons are very good, because many girls have surgery ... I told him I could do it there once we went. But she He wanted to surprise us with new breasts ... And look what a surprise. "

"The neurologist said she was dead"

Lina was quickly transferred to the Valencia Clinic public, "because we had no money to pay for a private hospital and because they told us they would have more means there." The final blow arrived there. The girl was unrecoverable. "The Clinic neurologist, who behaved incredibly with us, told us from the beginning that she was brain dead and that she had to have spent a lot of time in cardiorespiratory arrest to have stayed like this."

Lina Betancourt, in a photo courtesy of her family.

Two weeks later, Lina's heart stopped again and the family decided not to be artificially resuscitated, "because it was going to be completely vegetable . " Lina died and the family filed a criminal complaint against Dorsia and the Nisa October 9 Hospital, now investigating the facts Instruction 2 of Valencia.

"But the most incredible thing is what has happened since then," says the father, Leonardo, supported by his lawyer, Andrea Zaez: "It's not just that no one from Dorsia has even contacted us to explain what happened: they insist on ask my mother to pay for the operation , and they threaten to put it in a file of delinquents, in Asnef. " From Dorsia it is assured that it is the financier who intervened in the operation who would claim the payment, but it is not explained why he was not told what happened so that the payment was suspended. The operation had a cost of "between 3,000 and 4,000 euros", to be paid in monthly installments "of between 80 and 100 euros".

"The surgeon said he had done everything right"

The judge now investigates why Lina Marcela Betancourt died. "When we got there," explains his father, "the surgeon came out and said he had done everything right, and left." It is the position that Dorsia maintains, manifested this Thursday to this newspaper: that the surgery was done perfectly and that "the complications happened later ", pointing to the attention of the girl at the Hospital October 9.

The center, on the other hand, has assured the contrary to this newspaper: that it simply rented the spaces and the operating room from Dorsia , that the chain was in charge of all the benefits and that, in fact, the hospital management has prohibited them from operating again In its facilities the medical team of that lazy day.

Lina Betancourt, in another image courtesy of her family.

The family supports the thesis that the young woman could be left alone during the resuscitation, and even her father and her lawyer say they have collected testimonies at the center that would say that "a worker who was passing by found her convulsing in a hallway , and was the one that gave the alarm voice ".

"We believe it was abandoned in resuscitation"

The key to the case is, according to the Betancourt lawyer, in what went around the surgery. On the one hand, in what happened just after: "What we believe is that the girl was abandoned on the stretcher in resuscitation , and for this we rely on what the Clinician's neurologist told us: she assured us that after entering the stop , for whatever reason, it had to spend a lot of time like this, because a 23-year-old body can get to be seven or eight minutes with the brain without irrigation, but if it was left with 75-80% brain death it is because it could be between 15 and 20 minutes . "

On the other hand, Leonardo Betancourt argues that the preparation may not have been adequate and that is why there would have been the stop that, not well attended, would have led to the death of Lina: "To her, as my mother tells us now, in Dorsia They told her in principle that they were going to operate it next January, but then they called her and told her that they had a gap in August, that if she wanted to advance it, she said yes, of course, and apparently they made tests that take more time in just two days, that same week. "

Dorsia's version

Dorsia defends himself by affirming to this newspaper that the work of the surgeon "was perfect", that he has not yet been notified of any complaint against him and that the request for payment is not made by them, but "probably the entity that was going to to finance the service " so that instead of paying the toll it was paid in installments. The firm, on the other hand, cannot explain why it has not informed said financier of the result of the operation and of the investigation in Instruction 2 of Valencia.

The Nisa 9 de Octubre Hospital in Valencia, managed by Vithas, and the chain blame each other. Lina Marcela Betancourt arrived with 11 years in Spain, and always lived in Valencia. "I was telling her that she didn't need that breast augmentation, that she was perfect as she was," says Leonardo. "It was what I told her as a father. I told her that I better used that money to study or work, but she preferred to dedicate herself to her daughter, who was born with hydrocephalus due to complications in childbirth, and she was completely dedicated to her," Leonardo Betancourt ends.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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