A choice that sparks controversy and raises fears for the safety of the most vulnerable patients: "No to moving the pediatric intensive care unit to the spaces designed and ready to accommodate liver and pancreas transplant patients at Brotzu", the appeal is launched by the association Prometeo Atf Odv.

Those spaces, on the seventh floor of the hospital on Via Peretti, were recently renovated – with an investment of 400 thousand euros – to transform the Semi-Intensive Care Unit into an Intensive Care Unit exclusively for the Transplant Center. Now, however, the company management has decided to allocate them to a completely different purpose: intensive care for children. A choice that, although noble, would translate – according to Prometeo – into very serious “collateral damage”.

"We do not accept that a right is granted to the detriment of other patients, who are already in critical conditions", says Giorgio Pavanetto, president of the association. The problem is not the opening of a pediatric intensive care unit, considered a duty in a facility of excellence like Brotzu, but the fact that this happens by taking away resources and protection from those who have just undergone a transplant: very fragile patients, who today are discharged from the general intensive care unit directly to the ward, without a protected passage.

A practice that, according to the stories of patients and family members, increases the risk of infections precisely at the most delicate moment of the post-operative path. The intensive care unit dedicated to transplant recipients, ready and never activated since last September, would instead represent a vital filter, both clinically and in terms of safety.

Prometeo now asks for transparency and answers from the Region: how many patients have actually used those spaces in recent months? And why is the Transplant Center not given back what was planned and created for them?