Cardiac surgeon dies after patient's surgery

Rome: An Italian cardiac surgeon has died minutes after he completed a complicated operation on an elderly patient at a clinic near Milan.

Before the operation, Vincenzo Capacchione, 49, complained of chest pain but managed to successfully carry out the four-hour surgery on a 70-year-old patient who was admitted to a clinic in a critical condition.

The surgeon, who had three daughters, died after the patient was taken away from the operating room.

"On that morning he thought only of saving the patient. He behaved like a real doctor," one of his colleagues said.

The autopsy results are not immediately known but Capacchione is thought to have died of an aortic rupture Saturday, according to local media reports Wednesday.