The director of the ICU of Patras Hospital, Andreas Eliades was the first person to ring the "bell" for the behavior of Roula Pispirigou after the first cardiac arrest of Georgina.
In his testimony to the 18th interrogator on April 8 for four hours, he described what happened in four hospitals but especially what he saw in the mother that was strange. The newspaper "Patris" reveals his testimony.
"Georgina's first admission to Rio"
On April 11, Mr. Eliades receives a phone call from the Karamandaneio about a little girl who has suffered a cardiac arrest.
"Our concern in such cases is that the patient might suffer a cerebral oedema, which could even result in death. So we also froze little Georgina's brain to protect her brain as much as it could be protected. After we stabilized the patient, I gave the first update to the parents. I told them that the struggle would be difficult and that there was a possibility of even death in such cases. The little girl seemed to be winning the battle day by day."
"The change of mother"
The doctor trying to save the little girl learns about the deaths of the other two children. He contacts Malena's oncologist who tells him that "she too considered Malena's death to be sudden and strange and that there is no justification for liver failure in the child."
During the morning debriefing with the parents, the doctor notices a change in the mother. "I sensed from the mother that there was a variation in her feeling. As if she was watching what was happening to her daughter as a third person spectator. Even the nurses noticed this behavior of the mother and told me about it.
I discussed this with her and she told me that she has already lost 2 children and that she knows that I would call her an 'ice queen' and I tried to make her feel that she is not alone."
Munchausen's syndrome
The mother's behavior leads Mr. Iliades leads to the thought that there is a possibility that Munchausen's syndrome is present in the mother.
"I visited 2 psychiatrists, the director and the deputy, I spent a lot of time with them in different sessions, I expressed my concerns to them and I wanted to know if this syndrome existed in this case so that we could help. The appointment was made, but there was a reluctance on the mother's part because she was waiting for her husband to go to the psychiatrist together. The parents questioned the whole process with the psychiatrist because of the questions the psychiatrist was asking the mother and told me that they did not wish to continue seeing the psychiatrist.
The father told me, ''my wife is not crazy'' and the psychiatrist who examined her told me later that he did not diagnose her with acute psychotic syndrome."
"I called the Smile of the Child. I made 2 calls to it. The 2nd call was clearer and I expressed my anxiety about the possible existence of the above syndrome and there I was told that the incident was out of their jurisdiction and they suggested that I contact the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Then on my own I went to the forensic service and met Ms. Tsiola, with whom I have been working for many years and we have excellent relations. I explained the problem to her and I realized that she was aware of the issue because she herself had done an autopsy in Iris. I told her the whole clinical-medical history of Georgina.
So she came to our place, saw the little one and I expressed to her my anxiety about whether there is a connection between sudden deaths and something genetic. I asked her what to do and she told me that as a doctor I had to start gene testing, which had never been done on Georgina.
Gene testing started with the establishment of the Patras ICU."
Georgina's course
Doctors fall over the child and want to save her and make her live. They put in a defibrillator and on July 19, 2021 the child is discharged.
"In the discussions I had with the parents, regarding the development of the little girl, what struck me is that the father asked if something extra could be done for the little girl, i.e. an operation, while there was not the same interest from the mother. Usually the father would talk while she just listened and in fact in one of our meetings in my office it struck me that instead of the mother asking about her own child she was asking about the children I have in a photograph behind my desk who had similar problems.
On 17-01-2022 after consultation with the mother, the child was brought to the hospital in the ICU in Rio and a brain MRI was performed with mild intoxication (chloral from gastrostomy).
From that day onwards the mother reports that Georgina has episodes of vomiting and reported convulsions lasting less than 2 minutes, which resolved automatically. On 19-01-2022 she was admitted to the pediatric clinic of the Patras Hospital to investigate these episodes.
At the Patras Hospital, Georgina was hospitalized from 19-01-2022 to 26-01-2022, where she was transferred to the Aglaia Kyriakou Children's Hospital.
I told the parents that I don't see anything pathological and the little one can go down to the pediatric clinic. At the paediatric clinic again she had similar episodes. On 22-01-2022 she was again admitted to the Pediatric ICU in Patras, because she had 2 episodes similar to the previous one.
Then it was decided to do a more complex re-monitoring for two 24 hours. Our neurologist suggested that the child should have a 24 hour electroencephalogram. The parents agreed. After that the child was discharged from ICU but on 25-01-2022 he came back with episodes of reported seizures and bradycardia. We did all the tests as we had done the two previous times in the ICU and the values were again normal and the child did not have any more convulsions."
Mr. Eliades, when asked if a doctor had ever happened to be present at the time of the episodes mentioned by the mother, stressed.
"No doctor or nurse of the unit saw the child doing all these episodes that the mother reported to us."
"No doctor or nurse of the unit saw the child doing all these episodes that the mother reported to us. As long as she was under our care, the little girl did not show anything."
What Manos and Roula told me
In April 2021, during one of our meetings with Mrs. Tsiola in the intensive care unit, the mother happened to overhear the conversation between us and in particular the concerns and suspicions I had.
Then she came to my office with her husband and they mentioned that they did not want me to deal with something that was not related to the medical part of the procedure and that I should remain strictly on the medical part and I agreed and apologized as well.
While I thought that the relationship between us, i.e. doctor and parents, would be disrupted, the exact opposite happened.
The mother showed great trust in me, called me, asked me questions, asked me her questions and in general the relationship between us developed smoothly. Then I intimately believed that the father would come and ask me if I was worried about something, if I suspected something, since he was seeing movements from me regarding his child's health, which he never did.
The last day
On 29-01-2022, the day the little girl "left", was my last communication with Mrs. Pispirigou.
In fact, the mother deleted me from social media such as Facebook, never contacted me, as did the father, even though there were positive impressions of our unit.
Then I received a phone call from Mrs. Tsiola and she told me that the parents are trying to transfer the child for autopsy from Athens to Patras.
The actions of all of us doctors helped to keep the child in Patras for the autopsy, so that the forensic doctors could immediately get all the information they needed from the doctors of the Aglaia Kyriakou Children's Hospital.
I want to point out that during her hospitalization in the unit, I asked her mother to record on video the episodes of Georgina. I did this because we as doctors had never seen any episodes, since only her mother was present in all of them.
So, thinking that only she could make us aware of the little girl's episodes, I asked her to record these episodes on video.
Georgina's mother took three videos, but in them you can see alternately sometimes the little girl and sometimes the monitor in very fast motion. In this way it is not possible for the doctor to understand if it is a spasm episode because the camera does not focus on the patient for at least 2 minutes.
Source: patrisnews
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