Doctor Luigi Cavanna, sixty years old, head of Oncology at the Piacenza Hospital has become the example of Italian healthcare that works. Since the beginning of the pandemic, when the evil was still obscure and the probability of contagion very high, his mission she was - at her own risk - visiting as many patients as possible at home. Bringing them care and, even more so, a soothing to the solitude. For its courage and his humanity (in such a crucial period) the American magazine Time he wanted to dedicate a cover story to him in the very popular section HEROES OF THE FRONT LINES (the heroes on the front line).
The abnegation of the Piacenza oncologist and his precious intuition (going door to door to avoid hospital viral outbreaks) have literally traveled around the world. Thanks to his initiative, today we talk everywhere about Piacenza model. A model that provides visits accurate by health professionals equipped with protective devices and portable ultrasound scanners. An approach that with the support of the Ausl also includes the administration of cycle monitored and which is attracting the interest of many other companies in the area.
"Healthcare must be rethought on the basis of the clinical and human needs of the sick, who are increasingly elderly and with more pathologies. Less hospital care and more home care. And fewer accesses to the ER revolving door. In early March, the Piacenza emergency room seemed like the antechamber of hell. Sick everywhere, with dyspnoea, fever, air hunger, the Tacs that churned out reports on reports of bilateral interstitial pneumonia. " These are the words given to Corriere.it by Dr. Cavenna.
It was during the evening of March 11th - first day of Italian lockdown - that Dr. Luigi Cavanna, realizing the dramatic situation of the wards and the Emergency Department of the Piacenza Hospital, proposes to train rapid response teams to be enabled immediately. The next morning the head nurse Gabriele Cremona has already embraced the proposal without conditions and the first home visits were immediately activated.
The welcome of the sick it was touching. Many older people have been cared for and listened to. The help of the Piacenza team was vital to allay fears and a sense of loss. Many doctors and nurses involved in the program have been described by patients as real saviors. As if they came from another planet. They operated dressed like astronauts, in clumsy disposable suits, gloves, visors, masks. Entirely new paraphernalia at the onset of the pandemic. In addition, it was necessary to equip oneself with every possible instrument: ultrasound, portable electrocardiograph, oximeter, kit for swabs and drug cartridges (hydroxychloroquine, antivirals, antibiotics, cortisone, heparin). An unprecedented and certainly 'alien' operational structure for the sick married. But humanity has overcome all mistrust.
Numerous requests for help. "We went where there was a call for help, where loneliness hurt the most. There were those who had just lost a husband, a brother, a child… We often found ourselves crying with them. They knew nothing about the funeral, they no longer had any news of the family member who had ended up in hospital " Cavanna tells.
The good news is that his initiative, only experimental at the beginning of the pandemic, is now becoming increasingly consolidated with teams of operators covering the city and province according to an efficient system of shifts. To the initials thirty doctors many others have already been added on a voluntary basis. And it cannot be excluded that the initiative may extend to the whole of Emilia Romagna and then, hopefully, to the other Italian regions as well.
