Correctional referral required from two surgeons in Metz

The public prosecutor's office in Reims, in the Marne department, requested that two surgeons who had operated on Corentin, 11, who died in November 2014 in Metz after an intervention for appendicitis, be sent to correctional for manslaughter. "It is now up to the examining magistrate to decide whether he follows the prosecution's requisitions. If so, I should find a hearing date, probably at the end of the year or at the start of 2021, ”said Matthieu Bourrette, prosecutor of Reims.

"We have been waiting for this decision for five years," welcomed Pierre Jeras, Corentin's father who, with the boy's mother, had filed a complaint against X the day after the death of their child.

Seven practitioners intervened

Corentin was admitted on October 31, 2014 to the Claude-Bernard clinic in Metz for stomach pain diagnosed as acute appendicitis. Started on November 1, the intervention was quickly stopped when a shock was observed when fitting a tube for a laparoscopy, a surgical technique allowing to operate inside the belly by making only small incisions. .

According to a source close to the file, it was on this occasion that the aorta of the child had been affected, causing a hemorrhagic shock that was detected too late. In total, seven practitioners had intervened at the bedside of Corentin who was to die the next day at the Nancy University Hospital where he had not been transferred to the emergency after nine hours of operation in Metz.

An accusing letter from the child's father

Corentin's father, at the origin of the request for a change of scenery from the Metz file to Reims, authorized by the Court of Cassation, "accuses" justice, however, "of having directed the case to spare the clinic" and avoid that 'she finds herself on "the dock". In a letter which he has just sent to the investigative chamber of the Reims Court of Appeal and which AFP has been able to consult, he thus asks "firmly for further investigations and the referral to correctional of the clinic's former director.

According to Pierre Jeras, the latter could not ignore the fact that one of the accused surgeons had already been involved in several surgical accidents. "The file includes an insurance report (from the surgeon) showing at least eleven claims compensated in thirteen months of presence in Lorraine and for significant damage with regard to compensation," he wrote.

In 2016, the Order of Physicians also suspended the two practitioners for three and two years respectively.

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