This is the first organ harvesting carried out this year in Gallura, the one performed in recent days in the Giovanni Paolo II hospital in Olbia : a multiple organ harvesting from a sixty-year-old person who died following an acute irreversible brain injury . The sampling activity, which lasted six hours , was initiated by the ASL Gallura through the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Complex Structure , in coordination with the Regional Transplant Center which alerted various surgical teams from the Peninsula and Sardinia. Thanks to the generous donation of heart, liver, lungs and kidneys, five patients from Veneto, Tuscany, Piedmont and Sardinia now have a new life expectancy.
"When an organ harvest takes place, the first people to thank are the family members who, in a moment of great pain, have the strength to show generosity towards patients who without a transplant would have little hope of life", underlines the local coordinator of organ harvesting, Dr. Fabienne Fonnesu. «The assessment of brain death is a legal obligation . If a suspicion of brain death occurs in the hospital, a verification phase opens. The resuscitator - explains Dr. Fonnesu - evaluates the brainstem reflexes and carries out the breathing test. At that point he requires a neurological consultation to perform the electroencephalogram. If the tracing is flat, the CAM meets, the medical board made up of a Resuscitator, a doctor from the Health Department or Anatomopathologist and a Neurophysiopathologist. The Medical Board carries out all the checks required by current legislation to ascertain brain death. The collegial clinical evaluation lasts at least six hours. Once all the checks required by law have been made, and once the death has been ascertained, we contact the relatives. Then we warn the Regional Transplant Center which checks whether the person has indicated a willingness to donate, communicating it to the immediate family members, who in the event of non-expression can decide to give the go-ahead for the withdrawal".
As happened in Olbia, at that point the Regional Transplant Center assesses suitability: if the organs are compatible with patients on the waiting list residing in Sardinia, the island's teams are alerted, otherwise those in other regions are contacted. A long and delicate work - underlines Fonnesu again - where all the subjects involved are committed to respecting the wishes of the family members and saving the lives of other people". In Italy about eight thousand people are waiting for a transplant. «From an unfortunately painful event such as death - recalls the Director of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, Roberto Passaro - there is the possibility of giving a new life to many patients, through donation. When a brain death is recorded in our facilities, we activate the legal procedures. Thanks to the collaboration between the local Coordination and the Regional Transplant Center, the surgical teams carry out the removal of the organs deemed suitable at the operating block of the John Paul II hospital. Subsequently, the organs taken from the donor will be transplanted into compatible recipients on the waiting list. Throughout this process, the great teamwork that is created between the personnel of the intensive care unit, the operating block and all the specialists of Radiology, Cardiology and the Analysis Laboratory who intervene in the various phases is fundamental».
