Gigi Riva, the legend of Italian football has died
Italian football loses one of its greatest legends. Gigi Riva died at the age of 79. No one has scored like him with the Italian national team (35 goals in 42 games). The championship won with the shirt is legendary.
Gigi Riva: his last hours of life in hospital in Cagliari
Gigi Riva, footballer symbol of Sardinia and Cagliari of the scudetto, died of cardiac arrest, an acute coronary syndrome, suddenly, while he was hospitalized in the Cardiology department of the Brotzu hospital in Cagliari. His body is currently in the mortuary. According to what the doctors who followed him reported, during a press conference in the hospital, Riva had arrived this morning at 3 in the morning with access from the emergency room with an acute coronary syndrome. At 10.30 he underwent a coronary angiography which highlighted a very serious coronary disease. As explained by the health director Raimondo Pinna, “After an evaluation by a multidisciplinary team, he was offered coronary angioplasty surgery which the patient refused.” At 5.50pm Riva had a cardiac arrest. “All cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers were immediately performed,” continued Pinna. “During the resuscitation procedure he was taken to the haemodynamic operating room to perform an attempt at coronary angioplasty which unfortunately proved ineffective. Despite resuscitation measures, death occurred at 7.10pm.”
Riva was preparing for dinner, he had his wife next to him, he was calm, reported the medical director of Brotzu. “This morning the specialists had offered him the possibility of an angioplasty,” explained Pinna. “The patient preferred to think about it. I got to talk to him before 6pm and he was fine. He was joking. I informed him that the press was asking for news about him and he agreed to communicate his state of health. His wife was with him and nothing suggested such a serious deterioration. The situation suddenly worsened”. Then the two children arrived. “The coronary situation was certainly very serious,” reported Bruno Loi, director of the Hemodynamics department. “In these cases, since it is an acute coronary syndrome, we suggested an angioplasty operation which we would have performed immediately if Riva had given us consent. Unfortunately this did not happen. Operations cannot be performed against the patient's will, so we had to wait because he would have wanted to talk about it with his family. Unfortunately, these situations can worsen, even suddenly, and in this case it becomes difficult to intervene. And that's what happened. The cardiac arrest occurred suddenly and we were forced to perform resuscitation maneuvers and take him to the room for cardiac massage. In this situation it becomes extremely difficult to reopen the coronary arteries. We only partially managed to do it but it wasn't enough.”
“This morning I tried to convince him to undergo the operation we had proposed to him,” said the head of Cardiology, Marco Corda. “He told me that he didn't feel like it, that she was afraid of her and that he still wanted to consult with her relatives before making such an important decision. I explained to him that the coronary situation was particularly serious and that an attempt should be made to resolve it with angioplasty, but he was firm in asking us not to do it and to allow him to think about it”. “He was aware of the good that the whole city and the whole nation wanted for him,” added Pinna. “Without his written consent we could not intervene. And even the procedure that had been proposed to him, however, was not without risks. He could have had the same outcome during the surgery”. “I had also informed him of the risk of death. When he asked me not to perform the angioplasty we took him back to the ward,” Corda reported. “I also called the son to discuss together what to do and explained the reasons why the surgery would be necessary. Riva said to me 'Thank you very much, doctor'. And I replied: 'Don't worry, we will always be in your debt'. That's what I really felt.”
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