“I think it wasn't me”: the medical corporation and the cloak of suspicion behind the anesthetist defended by the MSP

By Jesus Vargas

Inés Miralles broke the silence after the conviction for the death of pediatrician Soledad Barrera. He reported the disappearance of fentanyl at the hands of his assistant, accused a lack of guarantees in the Prosecutor's Office and separated his controversial administrative benefit from any favoritism on the part of the minister.

The network of malpractice in the Uruguayan health system has just entered a terrain of corporate justifications and inconsistencies that shake the credibility of surgical protocols. The anesthetist Inés Miralles, criminally convicted of the manslaughter of the pediatrician Soledad Barrera—who suffered cardiorespiratory arrest in 2023 during gallbladder surgery and died after ten months in a vegetative state—decided to break the secrecy to try a defense that disengages her direct responsibility and points against the rest of the medical team. In a scenario where the pain of a destroyed family intersects with the resolutions of the political leadership, the professional questioned the rigor of the investigation and defended the controversial intervention of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), under the leadership of [cristina lustemberg], which significantly reduced her disqualification from practicing medicine.

This media counteroffensive, which seeks to reverse the impact of an already closed judicial file, gained absolute visibility during the interview with Informative Carve (Radio Carve). In this radio space, Miralles took aim at the Prosecutor's Office, described the abbreviated process in which he accepted his guilt as a forced exit due to the "lack of guarantees" of the judicial system, and flatly denied the rumors that circulated in the halls of the mutual societies about an alleged addiction to fentanyl, a powerful controlled-use opioid that became one of the keys to medical suspicion.

🔴 Anesthetist broke the silence: he denied addiction to fentanyl, maintained that there are others responsible for the malpractice and spoke of the link with Minister Cristina Lustemberg

The anesthetist Inés Miralles broke the silence after the Minister of Public Health Cristina… pic.twitter.com/CnlPdrm2Pj

— Radio Carve 850 AM (@carve850) May 26, 2026

The reconstruction of critical hours within the operating room exposes severe contradictions between the acting professionals. Miralles argued that the day of October 26, 2023 was marked by work overload, having chained procedures since seven in the morning without technical relief. According to his story, he was gone for a few minutes to cleanse his face, leaving the patient under the supervision of his assistant, Alejandro Aguiar. However, the statements contained in the preliminary investigation contradict this temporal scheme: the witnesses estimate that the absence was much greater and the forensic reports determined that the victim's severe brain damage is incompatible with the immediate resuscitation maneuvers that the anesthetist claims to have led.

Adulterated blisters and the route sheet that the SMI tried to hide

The most opaque side of Miralles' testimony lies in the administration of narcotics during the surgical procedure. The official prescription for the procedure was for five vials of fentanyl, although the standard dosage applied to the patient required only three units. The doctor tried to divert criminal responsibility by alleging that the handwriting on the document belonged to her assistant and questioned that the internal audit of the American Sanatorium (SMI) did not advance the nursing staff to determine the destination of the two missing vials. This sloppiness with highly dangerous drugs was complemented by the omission to fill out the anesthetic form on the day of the misfortune, an oversight that the professional justified under the label of the “maelstrom and madness” of the moment.

The controversy does not end within the walls of the healthcare center and has already escalated to the level of ethics and national politics. The decision of the minister [cristina lustemberg] to reduce Miralles' professional disqualification from five to three years—against the initial criteria of the MSP technical services—caused the immediate reaction of the victim's mother, who formally denounced the leader and the doctor before the Medical Ethics Court. Miralles denied any type of political or personal connection with Lustemberg or with the coordination director, Zaida Arteta, attributing the benefit to a strict technical review of the background and cataloging the allegations as part of the “union thread” that prevails in medical unions. With a firm criminal conviction but a discourse of public innocence, the case continues to erode public confidence in state control of medical praxis.