Over two hours to get to the hospital after the illness at home, 118 accused of the death of the 64-year-old. The ASL: “Correct procedure”
Asl Toscana Centro has provided its version of the facts on what happened yesterday in Vaiano. Version that does not convince Mayor Primo Bosi. Donate your organs
“Everything was carried out in full compliance with the procedure”. Thus the Asl Toscana Centro judges the work of the 118 service in rescuing the 64-year-old from Vaiano who yesterday suffered an illness at home, went into cardiac arrest on transport to the hospital with an ambulance of only volunteers and died two hours later at the Careggi hospital where he was accompanied by Pegasus.
A version of the facts that does not convince the mayor of Vaiano, Primo Bosi, who this morning sent a Pec with a request for clarification to the regional health councilor, Simone Bezzini and to the general director of the ASL Paolo Morello Marchese. A third Pec left for the Prefecture. “If by Monday I don’t receive clear answers on what happened also with respect to the incomplete and contradictory report I received this morning and which raises more than one doubt in me, I’m ready to take legal action and file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office. I will consult with the lawyers”. It is not yet clear what the relatives of Stefano Farsetti will do, who lived only in his home in via Mazzini. His relatives live elsewhere. It is his niece who lives in Arezzo that the man called late yesterday morning to ask for help.
The call to 118 Florence Prato from Cur 112 arrived at 13.25. Let’s start from here to publish the version of events provided by the ASL through a press release.
The caller tells the operator that she “felt him confused on the phone.” A yellow code is then assigned. At 13:27, after further investigation, the Bravo 4904 first aid ambulance leaves (North Prato Red Cross, element not specified by the ASL, ed) arriving on site at 13.41. The crew communicates the patient’s conditions in accordance with the protocols in use regarding the state of consciousness, quality of breathing, skin color which were normal. A medium critical code 2 was assigned and the ambulance was directed to the Goddess of Santo Stefano in Prato for the necessary checks and treatment.
At 14:12 he left for the hospital in Prato. At 14:21 after 9 minutes, en route, the vehicle informs the operations center of the change in the patient’s condition. Loss of consciousness and alteration of respiratory function is reported, which at the same time induces the activation of Vernio’s advanced medical rescue vehicle, while the 118 operator remains in contact with the Bravo crew to ensure the start of resuscitation maneuvers and of their correct execution. In sequence at 14:27 the Pegaso 1 helicopter rescue is activated from the base in Florence as the patient, in cardiac arrest, was at that point potentially eligible for ECMO treatment at the Careggi Centre.
At 14:49 the medical vehicle of Vernio arrived on the spot and continued the resuscitation maneuvers already correctly implemented by the crew of the Bravo 4904 vehicle while in the meantime it landed, in the permitted place (the Briglia sports field, ed), the Pegaso 1 vehicle whose crew reached the Vernio doctor already operating in the place where the first vehicle had stopped. The patient was further stabilized (Lucas also applied, the automatic massager, ed) and arrived in Careggi by helicopter at 15.28 where he was taken over by the Ecmo Team for the reperfusion attempt during cardiac arrest.
The application of the procedures put in place by the operations center and by the medical crews that followed each other made it possible to subject the patient to an attempt at resuscitation also with Ecmo (extracorporeal circulation, ed); the Ecmo procedure, even if started, did not allow the resumption of cardiac activity with the death of the patient and the start of the organ donation procedure.
This is the version of the ASL. According to Prato News, the Bravo sending code was 1 (red), but beyond the first evaluation of the patient, this reconstruction highlights a very important fact for understanding whether the 118 service, in the light of the recent cuts on the Vaiano daytime medical station not replaced by nursing except at the weekend, is appropriate for the area it has to cover. The patient arrived in Careggi two hours and three minutes after the 118 call for help. An infinite time for those who have a heart attack and must necessarily get to a hospital as quickly as possible. When the Bravo ambulance stopped almost on the border between Vaiano and Prato due to the worsening conditions of the 64-year-old, there were about ten minutes left to get to Santo Stefano. Ten minutes against the sixty-seven employees for Careggi, determined by the decision to have the medicalized Vernio and Pegaso arrive to divert the man to Florence. Hindsight is useless, especially in the face of the death of a person, but there is no doubt that if there had been a professional, doctor or nurse in that ambulance, who had pulled straight towards Boxing Day, the 64-year-old would have had a chance more than saving.
While waiting for the picture to be further clarified, there remains the emotion for the last act of generosity of this unfortunate citizen who donated his organs and the hope that his death was not in vain compared to a dimensioning of the service that every day arouses more than a perplexity and concern among citizens and operators.
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