Italy prosecutors probe 8 suspect hospital deaths

ROME, May 5 (Reuters) Prosecutors in Italy have opened an investigation into the deaths of eight hospital patients whom they suspect were mistakenly administered a poisonous gas instead of oxygen during heart operations.

The deaths all took place in a new coronary intensive care unit opened on April 20 at the Castellaneta hospital in the south-eastern city of Taranto.

The unit was closed down yesterday after investigators discovered defective respiratory equipment meant that nitrogen protoxide, a gas used as an anaesthetic, had almost certainly been pumped into the latest victim's lungs instead of oxygen.

Prosecutors suspect the seven previous deaths may have been due to the same cause.

The condition of the patient, a 73 year-old woman with only a mild heart condition, suddenly worsened as doctors prepared to perform a routine operation.

''The oxygen was disappearing from her blood at an astonishing rate,'' Antonio Scarcia, the head of the heart unit, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

''We only finally realised what had happened afterwards, when we connected the respirator tubes to other apparatus that analyse the emissions,'' he said.

Health Minister Livia Turco said the episode showed more staff were needed to reduce safety risks. The head of the Puglia region which oversees Taranto's hospitals promised ''maximum severity'' against whoever was responsible.

Hardly a month goes by without new media reports of ''malasanita'' -- malpractice, poor hygiene and low safety standards -- in Italy's national health system.

Nationwide police inspections in January highlighted serious violations at one in six hospitals, such as rat droppings on the premises and expired medicine stocks.

Recent cases have included doctors mistakenly transplanting organs from an HIV-positive donor into three recipients, and a girl who died while having her appendix removed when the power failed and her ventilator was not plugged into a generator.

REUTERS SG VC1733