FELTRE/SETTEVILLE – Father Luigi Bassetto was very ill: he had a heart disease significant and pulmonary edema, in addition to the after-effects of the two strokes that had affected him in the past. Everything emerged in the preliminary examination of the autopsy which was held yesterday in the morgue of the San Martino hospital in Belluno. But the turning point in the investigation will only come from the results of the toxicological investigations and will take at least a month. We remember that Father Bassetto died at the age of 80 on June 19th at the Feltre hospital after receiving a dose of morphine 10 times higher than that prescribed by the doctor. The manslaughter is being investigated in the manslaughter investigation.nurse Carmine Antonino Sarno, 44 years old from Avellino, who would have given the patient that drip with the narcotic. Could the religious man have saved himself without that drug in his body? The anatomopathologist Antonello Cirnelli of Portogruaro, appointed by the prosecutor’s office to carry out the autopsy consultation, is called upon to answer this and other questions.
THE EXAM
Yesterday, after the hearing to confer the appointment on Doctor Cirnelli which was held in the prosecutor’s office, the preliminary examination took place at San Martino. A procedure that also took place in the presence of the consultant appointed by the defense: Dr. Duilio Della Libera, former head of Pathological Anatomy at the Feltre hospital. But the nurse’s lawyer, Ferdinando Coppa, anticipates that the consultant will probably be supported by a specialist: probably a toxicologist. In the autopsy carried out by Doctor Cirnelli, all samples were taken for subsequent toxicological investigations. Tissues were also acquired for subsequent investigations. And, as mentioned, yesterday we saw the patient’s heart disease and a state of pulmonary edema. But it will take 90 days to have the results and answers to the prosecutor’s questions in the investigation coordinated by prosecutor Simone Marcon. In such a fragile patient, could that maxi-dose of morphine worsen his condition, leading to his death?
THE INVESTIGATIONS
The police are also working to reconstruct what happened in those days of hospitalization. At the Santa Maria del Prato hospital, the soldiers from Feltre seized Father Bassetto’s medical records and the drug loading and unloading records. From what we have learned, the dose of morphine was administered by the nurse due to serious carelessness two days before the death of Don Luigi Bassetto. But how much morphine is lethal? To answer this question, the patient must be evaluated, it varies from person to person and state of health.
It was the Ulss that alerted the prosecutor’s office when the inconsistency emerged, asking for an investigation. For this reason, Don Luigi’s funeral was blocked, which should have been celebrated on Friday 21 June in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso, celebrated by the Somaschi fathers, the order to which the religious belonged.
TO THE CASTLE
Meanwhile at the castle of Santa Maria, in the Quero area in the municipality of Setteville, where Father Bassetto lived for years, the volunteers are waiting for news to say goodbye to that priest who had done so much good. The caregiver who assisted him recounted that day in early June when he decided to call the ambulance for his heart failure. “If he stays here he will die,” the woman had thought. «She didn’t take morphine here, but in the hospital they administered it because Father Bassetto was struggling to breathe, she helped him – she told the Rai Uno cameras -. And he seemed to be better: they had to discharge him on Friday.” Instead a few days after death.
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