For the first time in Piedmont and one of the very first in Italy, a heart transplant was performed with the new ‘DcD’ technique, i.e. with a heart revitalized after the patient’s death, at the Molinette hospital of the Città della Salute in Turin.
At the center of the health story is a young man who in mid-July is taken from Canavese to Turin, to the San Giovanni Bosco hospital to be stabilized after a cardiac arrest with mechanical circulatory support (ECMO) and to treat the cause that resulted in cardiac arrest, or massive pulmonary embolism. After the treatments performed, the organs recover, including the heart, but unfortunately the brain has suffered irreversibly and the treatments are suspended with the consent of the family members, also in consideration of the will expressed by the patient himself while alive to allow the explantation of the organs.
The Regional Transplant Center of Piedmont, directed by Professor Antonio Amoroso, is then alerted, which orders the transfer of the patient to the Molinette hospital of the Città della Salute whose Transplant Center follows the new national ‘DcD’ donation program, the result of a working group made up of all Italian heart transplant centers coordinated by Professor Massimo Boffini and Dr. Marinella Zanierato of the City of Health of Turin.
Having ascertained the young man’s death, Dr. Mauro Rinaldi, director of cardiac surgery and of the heart and lung transplant program of the Molinettes, ‘revitalizes’ all the organs, including the heart, with an extracorporeal circulation and immediately the heart starts beating again. the liver to produce bile, the kidneys to urinate.
The heart is thus explanted and ‘donated’ in a 60-year-old Ligurian patient suffering from long-awaited terminal dilated cardiomyopathy, currently hospitalized in the ordinary cardiac surgery ward with an optimal course.
“Another important milestone in transplants for the Città della Salute of Turin, which confirms and consolidates itself as a Center of excellence at a national level. Also on this occasion it was the result of great teamwork, increasingly oriented towards new frontiers, built and shared with and among our extraordinary professionals”, comments the director general of the Città della Salute, Dr. Giovanni La Valle.
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