Florence's public health service came under fresh scrutiny on Wednesday after the mistaken abortion of a healthy 22-week-old fetus which is now fighting for its life.
The baby survived the abortion but subsequently suffered a brain haemorrhage and is currently being treated in the intensive care unit of a children's hospital.
Doctors said there was little chance it would survive.
The baby, which weighs 500 grams, was mistakenly diagnosed in the womb as having a defective oesophagus.
The mother consequently decided to abort the fetus, which was afterwards found to be perfectly healthy.
The Florence hospital which carried out ultrasound scans on the fetus, the Careggi university hospital, is the same one at the centre of a transplant scandal.
Last month, three patients at the hospital were given transplants using organs from an HIV-positive donor.
The hospital defended itself on Wednesday, stressing that an ultrasound scan carried out on the mother during the 20th week of pregnancy only showed the risk of a deformity.
It said the hospital had advised the woman to consult a specialist and undergo further tests.
The woman then turned to a specialist in the private sector, the hospital said.
The hospital is still reeling from the transplant blunder, which was attributed to a senior laboratory worker who mistakenly put HIV negative on a form, clearing organs from the infected donor for transplantation.
The error came to light when tissue samples from the 41-year-old female donor underwent further testing.
The three transplant patients were immediately put on drugs to reduce their chances of becoming infected.
The incident was a huge blow to the image of Tuscan medical care, which has in the past boasted about the efficiency of its transplant system.
It was also a further dent to public confidence in Italian health services in general.
There have been a string of fatal errors and apparently avoidable deaths in Italian hospitals and clinics over the past year.
The latest case involved a 19-year-old student, who died in the northern city of Pavia on Wednesday following a nose operation.
The student underwent plastic surgery in a Pavia clinic on Saturday to reduce the size of his nose. The operation was under local anaesthetic but the youth suffered a cardiac arrest which led to a coma.
Investigators are still trying to find out what caused the cardiac arrest.
In another headline case in January, a 16-year-old girl from Vibo Valentia in Calabria entered a fatal coma when a power cut occurred in the hospital where she was being operated on for appendicitis.
Every year, between 4,500-7,000 patients die in Italy because of infections contracted while in hospital.
Hospital infections are considered a factor in another 21,000 patient deaths while up to 700,000 patients contract non-fatal infections.
In 2005, 6.7% of all hospital patients had infections which could have been avoided in at least 30% of cases.
Reports of poor hygiene and low safety standards sparked a nationwide inspection of public hospitals earlier this year.
The January inspections followed a journalistic expose' of deplorable conditions inside Rome's Umberto I - the country's biggest hospital.
The Carabinieri police's health and hygiene unit NAS swooped on a total of 321 hospitals.
Less than half were given a clean bill of health, with 36.4% reported for breaching administrative norms, 17.4% for breaching building norms and 7.5% for breaching hygiene and cleanliness norms.
Southern regions were found to be the worst, with hospitals in Sicily, Calabria, Lazio around Rome and Campania around Naples proving the dirtiest.
Of the 24 Calabrian hospitals inspected, violations of various types were reported in 19.
In Sicily, 12 hospitals were found to be dirty and four to be stocking out-of-date medicines.
But Health Minister Livia Turco stressed that overall, Italian hospitals were cleaner than expected after the Umberto I scandal.
"We can trust our hospitals, even though some problems do exist," she said.
