In Italy that is moving towards thedifferentiated autonomy in healthcare there are centers of excellence in the public service in the South which are also chosen by patients outside the region for the quality of the surgery performed. It is a pity that it then happens that, at the time of the call for thehernia operation, “everything is postponed for months because the team is transferred to a smaller hospital where it is difficult to recover the waiting lists”. To tell time.news Salute about his “health odyssey” is Benedetto Di Gasparro, a resident of Lazio, but of Neapolitan origin, who wrote a letter-appeal to the president of Campania De Luca: “If you want that even from the rest of Italy patients come to Campania, these problems must be addressed and resolved immediately – he asks – instead of aggravating them, putting the good people we are lucky enough to have in serious difficulties”.
But let’s start from the beginning. “I discovered I had a right inguinal hernia in May 2022 – says Di Gasparro – I tried to find out where to operate and I discovered, with a certain pride, that in Naples Dr. Angelo Sorge and his team at the facilities San Giovanni Bosco and the Sea Hospital they performed this type of operation without resorting to stitches, thus almost completely canceling the risk of pain and even recurrence thanks to a self-absorbing mesh adapted by them. I have read enthusiastic comments from patients from all over Italy who had undergone day surgery and who returned home during the day and could resume their activities within a few days. So I book the visit and on 13 September 2022 I am visited by Dr. Sorge who defines my clinical situation as ‘a beautiful hernia’. I was told that within 2, maximum 3 months I would be called”.
Then the surprise. “It has been 5 months and, since my hernia has almost tripled, I contacted the Sorge staff, who inform me that I am 91st on the waiting list, after 5 months – the patient remarks – Not only am I told that there are about 400 patients waiting, but what is even more serious that the team from next Monday (February 6) will be forced to return to San Giovanni where the renovation works have not been completed and this will force to reduce even more the days of intervention, further lengthening the time to dispose of the long waiting list. I wonder – Di Gasparro denounces – why is the effectiveness of this team reduced by sending them back to the hospital where the works were not carried out?”.
For the patient now the problem is whether he can wait or if he will get worse and will have to go to an emergency room. “I am a citizen like many others who has paid taxes for a lifetime – continues Di Gasparro – I am 70 years old, I have the right to be treated in the public and within the established times, moreover I come from Rome from another region. If you want that even from the rest of Italy patients come to Campania, these problems must be faced and resolved immediately instead of aggravating them, putting the good people we are lucky enough to have in serious difficulties”.
“Governor De Luca – concludes the patient – shouldn’t complain if the people from Campania go to have surgery in other regions, or have to pass out in private. Why not provide the personnel and structures? I ask De Luca not to transfer the Dr. Sorge’s team at San Giovanni before the work is completed, and to put it in a position, rather, to increase the days of intervention in order to dispose of this shameful waiting list”.