Last update - 00:00 10/02/2008
Parents of brain dead Lebanon vet slam hospital for malpractice
By Ran Reznick, Haaretz Correspondent
Was Haifa's Rambam Medical Center guilty of negligence in its treatment of Yonatan Levin's head wounds when the 26-year-old soldier was hit by a mortar shell in the Second Lebanon War? Was the biggest head surgery ward in the North prepared to treat seriously wounded soldiers? Was the Neurosurgery Department working with a skeleton staff and without some of its senior surgeons? And who authorized the department's head to go on vacation to Eilat during the war?
These are only some of the questions of a special committee examining claims by Yonatan's parents - Rachel and Avishar Levin - who have accused the Rambam medical staff of malpractice. Their son is now in a coma at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer.
Over the past two months, some 20 hospital workers and senior doctors have given testimony to the committee, all denying any wrongdoing. And on Thursday, four senior neurosurgeons headed by Professor Menashe Zaaroor petitioned the High Court of Justice against the Health Ministry's director general, Avi Israeli, the four committee members and Yonatan's parents. The petitioners say the investigation has been conducted unfairly and improperly, and want the minister to call back the committee and ignore its findings.
Most of their complaints are aimed at top neurosurgeon and committee member Eliyahu Reichenthal and claimed that the professor should be disqualified from sitting on the panel because of a conflict of interest. The court ruled that the Health Ministry must submit a response within two weeks.
The events began in July 2006, when Lieutenant Yonatan Levin was called to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserves. On August 10, Levin was hit in the head and legs by shrapnel from a mortar shell. He was taken by helicopter to Rambam in serious to critical condition where, upon arrival, he was treated by orthopedic specialists and two neurosurgeons: Dr. Anshel Lemberger and a resident staff member, Dr. Sergey Abeshaus.
During the operation, the doctors decided to remove parts of Levin's brain without consulting a senior staff member. The following day, the department's deputy director, Dr. Jean Soustiel, told Levin's parents that their son could be "rehabilitated."
Later that evening, however, they were called to the office of another doctor and told that their son's clinical condition would only be determined the next day. They say he asked them whether they were willing to donate his organs, a request they refused. The following day, they were told their son was brain dead.
"We weren't offered any alternatives to rehabilitate him," the Levins said. "For two days he sat in the emergency room with dilated pupils, which a senior doctor says only caused further damage."
When Zaaroor, head of the Neurosurgery Department, returned from his vacation, he suggested carrying out a "life-saving" operation on Yonatan. "The operation worked," the parents said, "but because the damage caused during the first three days of treatment was so extensive, it had become irreparable."
Yonatan's parents petitioned the Health Ministry to investigate why he was treated by "junior" staff members without Soustiel's supervision. They also said the sanitary conditions at the hospital were abysmal. They wanted to know why Zaaroor was allowed to go on vacation during the war only a few weeks after he had already been absent due to a convention in Germany.
"All our lives we will care for Yonatan with great care and with great pain over the life he could have lived - a charming and talented boy who loved and was loved," the Levins wrote. "We consider the army and the Rambam hospital responsible for the failures we have described, and we will do all we can so that they never occur again."
In their petition, the neurosurgeons claim that committee member Reichenthal, one of Israel's top surgeons, examined Yonatan at Sheba Medical Center in order to formulate a medical decision for the Defense Ministry. Rambam doctors claim that this procedure was held in secret, compromised Reichenthal's objectivity and disqualified him from serving on the committee.
"During the committee's meetings, Reichenthal was noticeably hostile toward the four doctors," they wrote in their petition. "He leveled criticism at them that goes against accepted medical procedures." Reichenthal declined to respond to the petition.
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