2023-12-06 16:54:00
It’s 11pm on December 3rd when the phone rings at the home of Giuseppe Verolino, a young interventional cardiologist working at the Auxologico San Luca hospital in Milan. That day he is available and is watching a TV series with his wife Giulia. The health facility warns him that there is a 65-year-old person with “clinical characteristics and electrocardiogram” that suggest “a myocardial infarction” in progress. The patient himself will tell the rest of the story via social media, once the fear of the moment has passed. “They performed heart surgery on me and saved my life. They grabbed me by the hair a bit”, Roberto Scarnecchia will say in a video. Former football glory, now a chef, saved by two young doctors. “And the timing”, adds Verolino, 32 years old, originally from Salerno, to time.news Salute. Because in this story “the very right first choice” was to “activate help immediately”, he explains. And it was another young white coat who did it, who with his girlfriend was passing through Piazza Duomo just as Scarnecchia collapsed on the steps.
Having a myocardial infarction means that “an artery in the heart becomes acutely blocked and generates symptoms”, explains Verolino. In these cases it is advisable “not to wait. The mortality of an unoperated heart attack”, in fact, “increases tenfold for every hour that that artery remains occluded. And for us interventional cardiologists, the sooner we arrive, the more linear the intervention can be As was the case with Roberto.” Duration of the operation? “Thirty minutes, from when we started the procedure to when the artery was open again,” the cardiologist reports. “It went well and, since the operation takes place under local anesthesia, we can say that Scarnecchia was an excellent patient and collaborator. My team and I worked as a team and kept him informed during the procedure of everything”.
Then Scarnecchia was transferred to the coronary unit, “our high intensity unit for cardiac patients. And we owe the course he is having to a series of correct choices, first and foremost the initial one”, repeats Verolino. “Before leaving, when I went to say goodbye to him, he looked at me and said: ‘Okay doc, but am I going out in two hours?'”. The specialist smiled and replied: “Roberto, be patient.”
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