The first heart transplant from an organ that had ceased all electrical activity for 20 minutes was performed in the Padua hospital. In the past it had happened that transplants had been performed with the heart ‘stopped’ for a few minutes. But Italian law, in these cases, prescribes that the collection from cadavers can only take place when the heart has ceased activity for at least 20 minutes. “We were the first in the world to demonstrate that a heart that has ceased all electrical activity for 20 minutes can be used for a heart transplant,” said Gino Gerosa, director of cardiac surgery in Padua. The donor was a man suffering from ‘cardiac death’, with contextual, irreversible brain damage, which made any therapeutic persistence useless.
“This extraordinary result could lead to a 30% increase in the number of transplants in a relatively short period of time,” explained Gerosa, who led the Padua-based team. The operation was carried out on May 11 on a 46-year-old man with heart disease who had already been operated on as a pediatric patient and had been on the waiting list for a transplant for two years.
The importance of the intervention was underlined, in the announcement press conference, also by the resident of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia. “This is exciting news – he declared – it opens a new page in the history of heart transplantation, the result of an exceptional teamwork carried out by the Veneto healthcare system and by these top-notch medical professionals”.
breaking latest news © Copyright ANSA
