“With his conduct the accused prevented the assessment of the disease, having omitted the first necessary act” which would have started a diagnostic process capable of saving the life of Davide Astori. This is what the gup of Florence, Angelo Antonio Pezzuti claims, in the sentence with which he sentenced the sports doctor Giorgio Galanti to one year of imprisonment, suspended sentence, accused of manslaughter for the death of the Fiorentina player Davide Astori, found lifeless on the morning of 4 March 2018 in his hotel room in Udine while he was with the team.
Astori, it was confirmed by doctors, died of cardiac arrest due to an arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. According to the sentence, Professor Galanti, defended in court by the lawyer Siegfried Fenyes, allegedly committed “a diagnostic error” by deciding not to carry out further checks despite the ventricular ectopic beats that repeatedly emerged during the annual stress tests to which the captain was subjected of Fiorentina.
In the sentence, the GUP partially disputes the conclusions of the appointed experts themselves. «The experts – he affirms – added that the suspension of sporting activity would certainly have slowed the progression of the disease, in any case it would not have ruled out cardiac arrest with certainty. This argument – argues Pezzuti – does not appear to be acceptable. A correct diagnosis – he continues -, carried out at the end of all the necessary investigations, would have involved the installation of a defibrillation system and this would have excluded the death of the player ».