A court has cleared a family doctor of responsibility for the death of a female patient.

The 56-year old married woman fell ill after having been to the beach on a Sunday in August three years ago.

The following day she visited the family doctor, who attributed her complaints and localized symptoms to muscle pain and administered ordinary painkillers.

He had reached that diagnosis since he knew that the woman suffered from osteoporosis, lived on the top floor of a block of flats with no lift, did all the shopping and cleaning and had arthritis in her spine, the court was told.

Yet, the following day, the symptoms worsened, prompting the patient to call the doctor once again, complaining of general weakness.

The doctor visited the patient, carried out a general clinical examination and checking her blood pressure, pulse and heart beat. He prescribed a lower dose of her blood pressure pills, since this was low whilst her heart beat was high.

By Wednesday, the patient was running a fever and another medical check showed that her blood pressure was low, while her heart beat was high.

Knowing that his patient took medication to control her anxiety and in the absence of other symptoms, the doctor advised her to get in touch with him if the situation took a turning for the worse.

On Thursday, the family called in another family doctor who immediately wrote a ‘ticket of referral’ to Mater Dei Hospital where the woman was admitted for emergency treatment, passing away shortly after her admission.

An autopsy was carried out, as was standard practice when a patient died within 24 hours of admission to hospital.

The cause of death was initially determined as being due to natural causes namely pneumonia and acute myocardial infarction in view of the patient’s ‘heavy’ lungs.

However, further histological examination showed that the lungs were heavy and congested as a result of blood accumulated therein when the patient’s heart failed some six hours before her death and had nothing to do with pneumonia, the court was told.

The criminal inquiry had set off on this mistaken premise, since the inquiring magistrate had not been provided with this important clarification.

In the light of all medical evidence, the way that the patient’s clinical picture varied from day to day and the doctor’s detailed examination on each visit on the basis of the complaints and symptoms presented, the court concluded that “he had shown the diligence ordinarily expected of a doctor in similar circumstances.”

Given the patient’s medical history and the fact that the symptoms lent themselves to varying diagnoses, Magistrate Doreen Clarke said that the death had not been “necessarily foreseeable.”

The doctor had exercised his profession correctly and had “no link to the death,” the court held, acquitting him of involuntary homicide.

Lawyer Joseph Giglio was defence counsel. The court banned publication of names.