VERONA – A new cardiac transplant with a stopped heart – con donor who has been dead for more than 20 minutes – was carried out in the university hospital of Verona. The novelty, compared to the first operation carried out in this way in Padua in mid-May, lies in the fact that the surgeons were able to remove all the thoracic and abdominal organs from the now deceased donor (Heart, lungs, kidneys, liver), then successfully reimplanted in 5 patients awaiting transplantation. Since the first time in Padua, 4 transplant operations with a stopped heart have been carried out in Italian hospitals so far, 2 in Padua, one in Verona and another in Turin.
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The protocol applied by the Veronese team is the same developed by Gino Gerosa, cardiac surgeon at the University of Padua. Also in the case of Verona, the donor heart had stopped beating for 40 minutes: this is the time including the pre-agonal phase, of 20-25 minutes, and the observation phase, by law, 20 minutes, of the cessation of the activity cerebral.
The details of the intervention will be announced on Monday, June 26, during a press conference attended by the rector of Verona Pier Francesco Nocini, Marco Callisto Bravi, director of the integrated hospital of Verona, Giovanni Battista Luciani, director of the of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Verona, and Giuseppe Feltrin, head of the regional transplant center.