A heatstroke that risked being fatal for a 26-year-old woman , saved thanks to a super-urgent liver transplant at the Molinette hospital in the City of Health in Turin .
The girl , from the Alba area (Cuneo), was taken ill near her country house during a hot sunny morning . Found unconscious by her family under a tree, she was taken urgently to the hospital in Verduno (Cuneo) with an internal temperature of 41 degrees . Once his vital functions were stabilised, however, he developed fulminant liver failure , which made the transplant necessary.
The resuscitation doctors at the Verduno hospital, directed by Enrico Ravera, immediately intubated the young woman, cooling her with ice and cold intravenous fluids. This prevented the lethal progression to multi-organ failure. From the following day, however, the situation of the liver worsened, very quickly configuring a picture of severe liver failure with fulminant evolution .
After a consultation with the doctors of the Molinette hospital of the City of Health of Turin, Luca Cremascoli and Antonio Toscano of Anesthesia and Resuscitation 2, directed by Roberto Balagna, and the hepatologist Silvia Martini, the patient was transferred there urgently.
Twelve hours later, in consideration of the severity and irreversibility of the liver damage, the director of the Liver Transplant Center and new director of the Transplant Department of the City of Health of Turin, Renato Romagnoli, decided to include her on the waiting list for a liver transplant. liver with national super-urgency priority level.
The surgical team of the Turin Center was at that moment engaged in an organ procurement in another Piedmontese hospital, with the coordination of the Regional Transplant Center (directed by Federico Genzano Besso). Damiano Patrono, Romagnoli's surgeon collaborator, was completing a delicate operation to divide the liver of a donor into two parts (the so-called Split Liver), so that the left part of the liver (smaller) was transplanted into a pediatric recipient in another Center Italian transplants and the right (larger) part was transplanted into an adult recipient in Turin. The latter was perfectly compatible with the girl's needs.
Less than two hours after entering the waiting list, the young woman was then taken to the operating rooms and the highly complex surgical transplant, which lasted approximately eight hours, was performed by Romagnoli and his team . Less than four days later, the patient's condition is rapidly improving and she is gradually waking up in the intensive care unit, directed by Roberto Balagna. «A life saved which confirms once again the very high level of the professionals and the excellent organizational machine of the City of Health of Turin. The effective collaboration with the other Piedmontese hospitals has allowed us to network and perform a true miracle" comments Giovanni La Valle, general director of the City of Health of Turin.
(Unioneonline/vl)
