A useless thyroidectomy has been ordered by the Naples 3 Sud Local Health Authority (ASL): €50 awarded to a patient who suffered damage from the scalpel.

The Torre Annunziata Court has confirmed the error of the doctors at the Santa Maria della Pietà hospital in Nola: they should have simply monitored the nodule, but instead removed the entire tumor. The lawyers say the surgery was unjustified; now justice has been served.

Nola – A devastating, invasive, and, above all, completely unnecessary surgery. The decision by doctors at Santa Maria della Pietà Hospital in Nola to completely remove a patient's thyroid without a true medical emergency resulted in a conviction and a €50 fine for the ASL Napoli 3 Sud health authority.

The sentence, issued by the Torre Annunziata Court, brings to an end an ordeal that began in 2016 and restores dignity, albeit in the face of irreversible biological damage, to a woman who was just forty years old at the time of the events.

Reconstruction: an avoidable operation

The patient had been referred to the Nola hospital for a small nodular goiter. A common condition that, according to standard medical protocols, later confirmed by expert reports, did not cause any functional impairment. The standard practice would have required simple periodic monitoring ("watchful waiting") to monitor the nodule for growth. Surgery was supposed to be the last resort.

Instead, the doctors in Nola chose the most drastic approach: total thyroidectomy and removal of the parathyroid glands. A "serious" clinical error, as confirmed by the court-appointed technical consultants (CTU), which condemned the woman to a life of drug dependence on replacement therapy, having permanently lost the functionality of her thyroid organs.

The legal battle

The woman, realizing the medical abuse she had suffered, decided to appeal, assisted by the lawyers of Studio Associato Maior (Michele Francesco Sorrentino, Pierlorenzo Catalano, and Filippo Castaldo), with the technical support of medical examiner Dr. Marcello Lorello. The defense's argument was fully accepted by the Oplonti judges: the intervention was unjustified.

"This ruling represents an important step in the fight to protect patients who are victims of medical errors," lawyers Sorrentino, Catalano, and Castaldo commented following the verdict. "We are pleased to have obtained clear recognition of responsibility and fair compensation for our client, whose life has been profoundly affected by a procedure that should never have been performed."