Andrea Purgatori, one year since his death. The state of the investigation and what the expert report found

Exactly one year ago, on 19 July 2023, journalist Andrea Purgatori died. An infective endocarditis that could have been cured with a series of antibiotics. This disease would have killed him. The indication came from the expertise of the Rome public prosecutor's office. The disease, the experts basically clarified, was never diagnosed but could have been eradicated 'with an effective antibiotic treatment', as the forensic experts commissioned by the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office to understand the causes of Purgatori's death and whether there was negligence and oversight on the part of the doctors who treated him, put it in black and white. Four are under investigation for manslaughter.

Purgatori's family said they were 'incredulous' at the doctors' actions and stressed in a note how 'the initial diagnosis in May 2023 by Prof. Gianfranco Gualdi of Dr. Di Biasi and Dr. Colaiacono of numerous cerebral metastases was wrong, as was unequivocally revealed by the autopsy investigation'. He also added that the erroneous diagnosis was reiterated despite 'continuous and serious ischemic episodes' and not only 'diverted the therapeutic course of the real pathology' but 'had extremely serious consequences, having led to immediate and important radiotherapy treatments on the entire encephalon at maximum power and intensity'.

Last 21 March, in order to ascertain the truth about the death of the Atlandide programme presenter, the Rome gip, as part of the investigation launched by the Public Prosecutor's Office, in which four doctors are under investigation for manslaughter, had assigned the maxi expertise. As part of the evidentiary incident, which had been requested in recent months by the prosecutors, the judge had also asked the assigned specialists to shed light on the presence of metastases and to attempt to ascertain how and when the cardiac infection started.

The expert report therefore outlined the first answers to the many questions that Purgatori's death had raised. The radiologist Gianfranco Gualdi, his assistant Claudio Di Biasi and Dr Maria Chiara Colaiacomo, both members of his team, and the cardiologist Guido Laudani, who treated Purgatori, are listed in the register of suspects.

The unrepeatable act of investigation had been requested by the Capitoline Public Prosecutor's Office in light of a consultancy that had been ordered to try to clarify the clinical picture of the journalist who died at the age of 70. The request cites the conclusions of the consultancy. "In extreme synthesis' the assessment 'shows that the journalist, although suffering from metastatic lung cancer, died from the consequences of an infective endocarditis that induced widespread systemic embolisation in the patient. This pathology,' it says, 'was not detected in time to be able to promptly initiate the appropriate treatment, and it was precisely in relation to his omission and in any case late diagnosis' that the cardiologist was registered.