The head physician dies after 17 days waiting for surgery at Villa Sofia: “He had contracted pneumonia”

His name was Giuseppe Barbaro, 76 years old, the man who died yesterday, 6 January 2025, at the Villa Sofia hospital in Palermo. He had been hospitalized for 17 days awaiting shoulder surgery when he died for reasons yet to be clarified. The relatives presented a complaint assisted by the lawyer Andrea Dell’Aira.

Now the Palermo prosecutor’s office has ordered an autopsy and is investigating his death. During the days spent in hospital, problems arose that were not related to the fracture but which, according to the family, were blamed on the doctors. The complaint states that “the health workers failed to consider the clinical conditions of the patient – hospitalized for a displaced fracture of the left shoulder – with evident symptoms of hypernatremia (high levels of sodium in the blood) associated with dehydration and body weight well below of the average without ensuring adequate intake of liquids and food and failing to promptly diagnose the onset – during the stay in the hospital – of bilateral pneumonia (the feverish state was reported by the children and only then administered paracetamol) and keeping him in the Emergency Department from 21 December to 24 December 2024, only to transfer him to the orthopedics department on 24 December where the patient’s condition became increasingly poor and weakened (and without ever planning any surgery).

The daughter’s reply: “My father arrived in hospital for a simple fracture”

Barbaro’s daughter also echoes the family’s accusations, explaining: “My father was in excellent health, he arrived at the emergency room at Villa Sofia with a shoulder fracture that he had caused by falling at home on December 21st. He remained in the emergency room on a stretcher in the corridor until the 24th. The fracture was simply bandaged and immobilized with an indication of the need for surgical reduction to be scheduled “as soon as possible”.

The Head of the Emergency Room: “He was not operable, he had contracted pneumonia”

“The patient was hospitalized for a fracture of the humerus there was no type of urgency-emergency. It happened that he contracted pneumonia as an elderly and deprived patient. He was evaluated by pulmonologists, cardiologists, anesthetists and the clinical conditions worsened by pneumonia did not allow us to perform the operation. We cannot operate on a patient in unsuitable conditions. After the diagnosis of pneumonia, all the appropriate measures and therapies were taken, the specialists did not recommend surgery because he was not in a condition to undergo it. His life was not in danger.”

Source: Palermo Live / PL editorial team