Young Valencian man loses testicle following health centre misdiagnosis

The regional legal advisory body, the Consell Jurídic Consultiu, has ruled that the Valencian Health Service (Sanidad) must pay the patient 9,400 euros in compensation for medical malpractice, partially recovering the 33,000 euros originally claimed by the young man.

The problems began in June 2023, when the patient visited an out-of-hours emergency clinic after suffering from acute testicular pain so intense that it induced vomiting. Following a basic clinical assessment and a negative urine test, he was discharged with a generic diagnosis of unspecified testicular pain.

When the symptoms persisted, the young man sought further assistance at a hospital emergency department the following morning. Medical staff noted swelling and pain, prescribed antibiotics, and referred him to a urologist for follow-up care. However, the medication failed to alleviate the pain, which progressively worsened over the following days.

The decisive medical failure occurred three days later when the patient returned to his local health centre. The attending practitioner failed to perform any physical examination, choosing instead to replicate the hospital's working diagnosis of orchiepididymitis - an inflammation typically caused by a bacterial infection.

This delay proved catastrophic. The next day, the patient returned to the hospital presenting with unremitting pain, a high fever, and headaches. Upon physical examination, hospital doctors discovered the testicle was heavily oedematised, significantly enlarged, and hard to the touch. An emergency ultrasound revealed severe ischaemia, confirming that the blood supply to the organ had been completely severed due to a testicular torsion.

The patient was rushed to theatre for emergency surgery to correct the 360-degree twist. However, due to the prolonged lack of blood flow, surgeons found the tissue already discoloured and necrotic; the organ's functionality was completely unrecoverable.

Official medical inspection reports and expert testimonies heavily criticised the primary care received by the young man, concluding that there was a distinct "loss of therapeutic opportunity".

Expert reports emphasised that had a proper physical examination and a Doppler ultrasound been performed within the first six hours of symptom onset, the probability of saving the testicle would have been close to 100 per cent. The ruling confirmed that the failure to adhere to diagnostic protocols directly predisposed the irreversible loss of the organ.