She was at risk of dying from a very serious and very rare infection. She, but also the baby she was carrying. An exceptionally complex medical emergency that, fortunately, ended with a happy ending. The young woman from Cagliari, twelfth week pregnant and arriving at the Brotzu hospital in almost desperate conditions, underwent surgery, followed by a long and complex course of treatment.

Mother and baby safe

It is thanks to the joint work of obstetricians, surgeons, hematologists and pathologists of Arnas that the woman was able to fully recover and, subsequently, give birth by caesarean section to a very healthy baby boy, who today has already had his first teeth. A unique clinical case in the world, so much so that at the end of May it was published in the prestigious international journal Case Reports in Women's Health, which recounts in detail the battle to save mother and child, conducted by a team led by Professor Antonio Macciò, full professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the University of Cagliari and director of Oncological Gynecology at the Businco hospital.

The drama

The woman had arrived urgently at Brotzu in critical conditions: an ongoing infection, profound anemia and, above all, a very rare and dramatic complication – extensive gangrene – that put her and her child’s lives at risk. The clinical picture was desperate: the patient also suffered from a chronic lack of white blood cells, cells that are essential for defending the body from infections. The doctors at Brotzu were able to immediately identify the diagnosis, which was far from obvious: it was Fournier’s syndrome, a fulminant form of gangrene usually found in male patients, characterized by a very rapid destruction of tissues caused by particularly aggressive bacteria. A case so rare that it has no similar precedents in international medical literature.

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