Three kilometers by bike, in the cold in the middle of the night, to have some syrup. The man had died shortly before reaching the assistance service

Three kilometers on a bicycle in the middle of the night and in the cold to get the recipe for a syrup. A path that was fatal for an elderly man who died a few meters from his destination: the medical guard he had tried to reach, given that the white coat on duty, contacted through the 118 switchboard, had refused to go and visit him, despite the cough and difficulty breathing. Symptoms of cardiovascular failure that would have emerged with a more scrupulous medical history. The Court of Cassation thus confirms a harsh sentence for the doctor in charge of the emergency and emergency health service (Suem) for failure to perform official duties and manslaughter as a consequence of another crime. In the judges’ sights was the behavior of the white coat who, despite having been informed by the elderly man of his condition, had left him no choice but to travel three kilometers by bicycle, the only means available, at night and with a rigid temperature, not even to subject him to a thorough examination, but only to give him the recipe for a cough syrup. And this despite the man insisting on saying “I feel bad… I really feel bad”, an evident request for a home intervention

A necessary initiative for the doctor who could not think of dealing with the situation by prescribing a routine drug that the patient himself had to take at the pharmacy. For the judges, the causal link between the doctor’s conduct and the death event, due to heart failure, was clear. The defense’s thesis, according to which the effort that had cost the elderly man his life, was only the result of an irresponsible personal choice and therefore of voluntary self-exposure to risk, does not pass. In fact, from the telephone consultation with the continuity of care doctor, the absolute underestimation of the case and “intentional hastiness” emerged. The professional’s request to reach him was peremptory and irrevocable, despite the prohibitive conditions: from the climate, to the distance, to his age. Nor can it be a justification to claim to have ignored that the man was alone in the house: an eventuality, unfortunately, entirely probable in the case of elderly people.