Zanardi transferred back to intensive care following recovery setback

Alex Zanardi has been forced back into an intensive care unit just three days after it appeared as if the former Formula 1 driver was making progress.

Earlier this week Zanardi was transferred from the Santa Maria alle Scotta hospital in Siena, where he had been treated for severe head and facial trauma following a handcycling accident on June 16, to a specialist rehabilitation centre, the Villa Beretta, 13 miles east of Como

That followed a period of stabilisation in his condition that allowed the 53-year-old's sedo-analgesia programme to be discontinued.

On Friday, however, Zanardi suffered a setback which has resulted in him being transported to the intensive care unit at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

A bulletin from Claudio Zanado, health director of the Valduce Hospital in Como, read: "Today, due to the instability in the clinical condition of patient Alex Zanardi, and after appropriate consultation with Dr Franco Molteni, head of the Villa Beretta Department of Specialist Rehabilitation, where the patient had been hospitalised since July 21, and the reference specialists, the transfer of the athlete was ordered.

“Adequate means and adequate assistance were used at the Intensive Care Department of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

"As of now, it has been specified that no further information on the case will be released."

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