The transplant of the heart and liver as a single organ saved the life of a 38-year-old woman with heart disease who had already undergone heart surgery several times.

The operation - of which there are no known precedents in Italy and Europe, and few cases in the United States - was performed at the Molinette hospital of the Città della Salute in Turin. The patient, from Rome, had been registered, due to the seriousness of her condition, on the national list of urgent transplants, managed by the National Transplant Center, in collaboration with the Regional Center of Piedmont.

The operation, which lasted a total of 12 hours, was planned by the multidisciplinary transplant team in Turin and its exceptionality lies in having maintained the normal connection between the heart and the liver. A type of transplant - the doctors explain - that "allows to minimize the time of ischemic suffering of the organs before being transplanted, thus offering a better recovery of their function immediately after the transplant".

The heart and liver were taken from a donor in Lombardy, in Turin a double team removed the diseased heart and simultaneously removed the liver of the 38-year-old patient, kept alive thanks to extracorporeal heart-lung circulation. Cardiac surgeons and liver surgeons simultaneously performed the vascular connections and, once circulation was restored in the multi-organ block, both the heart and liver began to function again.

The patient is now awake and breathing on her own; admitted to the intensive care unit of Cardiac Surgery at Molinette, she will then be transferred to the hospitalization ward.

(Online Union)

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