Amira’s challenges began when she was only 1 year and 1 month old. From that moment on, her life took a dramatic turn, becoming a patient of Dr. Burnei and undergoing during childhood and adolescence painful and even humiliating surgical treatments and interventions that had no therapeutic indication for the initial diagnosis, congenital dislocation only at the level of the left hip.

During the period under Dr. Burnei’s treatment and supervision, a minimum of 17 surgical technique errors and treatment errors were recorded, as revealed by the first medico-legal expertise carried out at the beginning of 2017 in Germany.

First of all, Amira was condemned to spend years in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, to undergo extremely painful and even humiliating interventions, she was condemned to a life of disability. A normal life suddenly became an alternative that was no longer allowed.

At the first surgical intervention, Amira was only 1 year and 1 month old. When she woke up from anesthesia, she was screaming in pain, she was put in a cast from the waist down, with her legs spread with a bar between them. Sleepless and painful nights followed.

They removed the cast only after 2 months, but walking was limping on the left side. Her mother did not know that the nightmare had just begun, nor was she told that a block of biovitroceramic had been implanted in her daughter’s hip, oversized, which eventually caused the appearance of a pseudoarthrosis at the level of the iliac bone and the neurological impairment of the sciatic nerve.

The initial surgical intervention (open reduction of congenital hip dislocation and triple pelvic osteotomy) had no therapeutic indication. Any type of pelvic osteotomy in a child under the age of 2 generates growth and development disorders at the pelvic level, a fact known by the attending physician at the time he inexplicably decided on the described surgical technique.

As specialists confirmed, the condition presented by the patient at that age was only a minor condition, which could be treated by classical treatment methods, and only after exhausting conservative, non-invasive methods, other surgical techniques could be applied after the age of 8, but less invasive.

According to the medical specialists consulted in this case, the introduction of a block of biovitroceramic in the supraacetabular osteotomy trench was not useful or necessary. There is no protocol or practice in orthopedic clinics regarding this material, so this technique was not and should not have been permitted.

At 2 years and 5 months, Amira was operated on again, this time on her right hip. Although there was no therapeutic indication and the mother asked the doctor why she should be operated on the right side, since her right leg did not hurt and bent normally, he told her that he knew what was best for the child.

As after the first surgical intervention, Amira was fixed in a cast for another 2 months, feeling again the pain of a useless intervention. Even after this intervention, there was no improvement, Amira was mostly carried in her mother’s arms, because after walking with one foot on tiptoe for short distances, her hip started to hurt and she asked to be carried.

At the age of 3 and a half, she was operated on again, this time on her left hip. Her mother was promised that this would be the last surgical intervention, but at the end of this intervention, the girl could no longer walk, had severe pain in the pelvic area, and could no longer use her left leg at all.

At the age of 8 and a half, the block of biovitroceramic was removed, but the iliac bone did not heal. The left hip remained dislocated and varicose. Amira limped and her left leg was 3 cm higher than her right one. The growth cartilages of the left pelvis were compromised.

At the age of 15, she underwent the most traumatizing experience of her life, namely, the installation of a fixator on her left femur. Neither the patient nor her mother were explained the procedure and its effects; they were only told that after the fixator was removed, Amira would be able to walk normally.

However, to understand the absurdity of this intervention, one must grasp the patient’s condition at that time: due to necrosis of the left femoral head, her pelvis tilted, causing the left side to rise, seemingly resulting in an inequality between the lower limbs. As long as the patient’s pelvis was tilted, it was normal to have an inequality between the lower limbs. In reality, there was no difference in the length of the legs; this resulted solely from the upward displacement of the left femoral bone. The solution was not to lengthen a “shorter” left femur but to balance the pelvis. The doctor’s decision was hallucinatory: instead of balancing the pelvis and thus achieving equality of the lower limbs, he chose to leave the pelvis untreated and lengthen (through an extremely risky and painful procedure) the left femur.

After the 6-hour operation, the mother was called to the Intensive Care Unit, and when she saw her daughter, she was almost fainting. The fixator was mounted from the pelvis down the entire femur, with a circle around the knee with 5 thin spikes all around entering the knee. The femur was cut in 3 places, which shocked her because no one had told her this would happen.

The left femur was lengthened by 8 cm, much too much, depriving the intervention of any beneficial effect. On the contrary, the difference between the lower limbs was accentuated, but in the opposite direction. If before the lengthening the left femur was “shorter” than the right, after the excessive lengthening, it became longer than the right femur.

Lengthening the left thigh brought no benefit to the patient; on the contrary, it led to the appearance of new complications: femoral nerve paralysis, femoral fracture, multiple post-fixator scars. Although she was only in bed, the fixator broke, and finally, in December 2013, it was removed. Her leg had been lengthened more than necessary, and the pelvis was still deviated upwards, but Amira was relieved to be rid of the devices that had pinned her from February to December 2013.

This procedure was, on one hand, useless, did not solve the problem of the pelvis, and, moreover, due to the premature removal of the fixator, another complication occurred – femoral fracture.

One year after the removal of the fixator, Amira was still bedridden, never went to school, never met her classmates. The months passed, and she could barely drag herself with the help of crutches; her left leg was pulled far back towards the knee. Her mother helped her walk to the bathroom with the frame or crutches and washed her.

Currently, the patient presents a serious pathology in the orthopedic and neurological sphere, affecting her entire spine, pelvis, and lower limbs. Her locomotor function is severely affected; neurological disorders are also serious and irreversible. Even if left completely untreated, her condition would have been much better morpho-functionally than it is now. Amira presents irreversible sequelae of the surgical interventions suffered, sequelae that fall under the notion of infirmity.