A journey of salvation from Bari to Turin. Aurora, a 19-year-old Apulian girl, suffering from a very rare disease, primary pulmonary hypertension, underwent a multiple heart and two lung transplant in ECMO, extracorporeal ventilation.
And it is the first time that a heart and lung transplant has been performed in Ecmo. A unique case, they explain to the City of Health.
The girl was suffering from primary pulmonary hypertension, which caused simultaneous heart and lung dysfunction.
At the end of May the first symptoms: she is short of breath, she gets tired easily and her legs swell. In the hospital, doctors confirm that the situation is very serious: the heart is very tired, the risk is very high. The diagnosis is precisely primary pulmonary hypertension, a very rare pathology, characterized by high pressures in the pulmonary vessels that causes a dysfunction of the heart.
Clinical conditions precipitate rapidly and Aurora must be kept alive with the ecmo.
Despite a specific drug therapy, no important results were found and the girl could not be detached from the Ecmo and mechanical ventilation. The only treatment option left is en bloc transplantation of the heart and lungs. From the Policlinico di Bari, Aurora is transported on a special Air Force flight aboard a C-130 at the Heart – Lung Transplant Center of the Molinette hospital of the City of Health in Turin. Here she is hospitalized in the Cardioreanimation department, coordinated by Dr. Anna Trompeo, and after a careful evaluation we proceed to the national emergency request of the three organs for a single life-saving transplant.
After 5 days of the news, the Regional Transplant Center proposes a donor. The race against time begins, the sampling team flies to Trieste to take the heart block – lungs. The girl is taken to the operating room and subjected to a long and delicate operation of over 12 hours, performed by the director Mauro Rinaldi and Massimo Boffini, with the help of anesthetists Antonio Toscano and Federico Canavosio. Once the last sutures are completed, the new heart and lungs begin to function immediately and the patient is able to be weaned from the Ecmo. After a few days the clinical conditions improve and Aurora begins to breathe on her own again. There is still a long way to go, says Rinaldi, “because the other organs also suffered long before the transplant and have yet to fully recover. However, the signs are very good, we are very confident ”.