Jan. 06--A lawsuit alleges that doctors at a north suburban hospital wrongly cut off lifesaving care to a 22-year-old man who had overdosed on heroin.
The suit, filed in Chicago federal court last month, claims medical personnel at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville inappropriately removed Randall Bianchi from a ventilator and allowed him to die in December 2012. The suit accuses the doctors of administering medical treatment designed to protect Bianchi's organs for donation when they should have been working to save his life.
Bianchi's mother, Lydia Cassaro of Florida, brought the lawsuit, alleging the doctors disregarded her desire for her son to be kept alive. Instead, doctors consulted with Bianchi's father and discontinued life support before the Grayslake man died, according to the lawsuit.
"The patient should have been given an opportunity to survive and to heal," said Devon M. Jacob, the Pennsylvania lawyer who filed the suit.
Defendants include the hospital and numerous doctors and nurses, among others. Hospital spokeswoman Kathleen Troher declined to comment on the suit's claims, noting that the litigation is pending. She said the hospital is taking the matter "very seriously."
"Our top priority is providing the safest and highest quality of care for our patients and their families," Troher wrote in an email.
Asked whether he felt the doctors made the right decisions, Bianchi's father, Mark Bianchi of Cary, said, "Hard to say. I'm not a doctor." The father, who is not a party to the lawsuit, called his son "the best kid in the world."
Bianchi served as a Marine but struggled with a drug addiction that led to an "other than honorable" discharge from the service, according to the lawsuit. In December 2012, he proposed marriage to his girlfriend, who accepted, the lawsuit states. But later that day he was found unconscious after a heroin overdose.
While doctors consulted with his father, who was at the hospital, they disregarded his mother's requests that they use all medical means necessary to save his life, the suit alleges. She was in Florida as her son was dying, the suit states.
Bianchi's driver's license indicated a desire to donate his organs, according to the lawsuit, and his medical care focused on maintaining his organs. Bianchi had no health insurance, the suit states.
Doctors eventually administered tests that can bring about brain damage in patients who might otherwise survive, the lawsuit states. He was pronounced dead after the tests, the suit states.
The defendants have yet to file a response to the lawsuit, according to federal court records.
dhinkel@tribpub.com
