28 year old Greca saved with a record transplant at Molinette in Turin

She had a few hours to live, but a flight to Turin and a liver transplant at the Molinette hospital in the City of Health and Science in the Piedmontese capital saved her. The story concerns a young Greek woman, 28 years old, Eirini, who studies in the Netherlands, suffering from Wilson's disease, a rare genetic disease characterized by the accumulation of copper in the liver.

She was in Greece when she felt ill, suffering from liver failure, which quickly progressed to multiple organ failure at the Hippokration General Hospital in Athens. The request for help was immediate from Italy, at the National Transplant Center in Rome, which activated the Italy-Greece collaboration protocol for organ transplants. Professor Renato Romagnoli, director of the Liver Transplant Center of Turin and regional transplant coordinator for Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, immediately responded favorably to the appeal.

Transport in record time to Caselle airport in a medicalized aircraft, then to Molinette in critical condition, unconscious and intubated, mechanically ventilated were the subsequent phases, up to being placed on the waiting list. In a few hours the availability of an organ from a nearby region arrived and within twelve hours of its arrival at Molinette Eirini was in the operating room. It was an operation that lasted about ten hours, number 4,470 of the Turin series.

Due to the very serious conditions, the post-transplant course was complex. Three months of hospitalization were needed to successfully treat the post-operative medical-surgical complications, thanks to multidisciplinary assistance offered by transplant surgery, anaesthesia, resuscitation, hepatology, nephrology, infectious diseases, diagnostic radiology and interventional radiology. The girl was then discharged in full psycho-physical recovery, with the expectation of returning home in the short term.

She herself thanked all the people who contributed to "saving her life on her last day". "A true miracle of life. Italy for Greece. A great gift of life: a new liver. The power of donation. The multidisciplinary excellence of our professionals. All this made it possible to save a young Greek girl, when the situation seemed to be definitively worsening. Molinette is more than a hospital" declares Livio Tranchida, general director of CDSS.