Liver and lung transplant for 16-year-old from Naples. Her mother: “Miracles do exist”

A 16-year-old from Naples, suffering from cystic fibrosis, underwent a delicate transplant with a surgical operation that lasted 22 hours. Marcella Enoc (Bambino Gesù): “Results like this are made possible by the generosity of donors and their families”

It was necessary to start a complex operation, a 22-hour marathon that involved a large medical team. But the result achieved at Bambin Gesù was surprising because, for the first time in the Roman hospital, a lung and liver transplant was performed on the same patient.

The beneficiary of the laborious operation was a sixteen-year-old Neapolitan, affected by a serious form of cystic fibrosis that usually attacks the lungs and in rare cases, other organs. Followed up at the Cystic Fibrosis Center of Naples since 2016, due to the progressive worsening of his conditions, was taken in by the cystic fibrosis center of Bambino Gesù in view of a transplant program. The disease, in fact, had caused serious respiratory failure, also damaging the patient's liver. For this reason, since last March, the young man had been on the waiting list for a double combined transplant.

But the search for donors with organ characteristics that would allow their simultaneous removal was not easy. While waiting for the transplanting the sixteen-year-old suffered a progressive worsening of his respiratory conditions which led him, since the end of September, to be hospitalized in intensive care with intubation and mechanical ventilation.

Thanks to the system of the National Transplant Center and the regional coordinations that manage the Italian transplant network, two teams from Bambino Gesù were able to promptly go to the donor's hospital to collect the organs. Meanwhile, in the Holy See Hospital, in Cardiac Surgery operating room, the transplant operation began: the diseased lungs were removed, the patient was put on extracorporeal circulation – thanks to the heart-lung machine that temporarily replaces its functions – and the new lungs that had arrived in Rome in the meantime were implanted. Once the lungs and heart function were restored, the extracorporeal circulation was interrupted and the liver transplant was performed.

THEThe operation lasted a total of 22 hours; if we also add the collection procedures performed in the donor's hospital, it took more than 36 hours. It is the first combined lung and liver transplant performed entirely by the specialists of Bambino Gesù. 54 days after the transplant, the boy returned home where he was welcomed with fireworks by his family.

“Today I can say that miracles exist – the boy's mother commented – At Christmas 2020 we began the journey at Bambino Gesù with the sole, but uncertain, prospect of a transplant to save my son's life. Having him at home with me today is the greatest and most unexpected Christmas present. I would like to thank all the doctors and staff at Bambino Gesù for their professionalism and humanity and, above all, for believing with us, and sometimes more than us, that my son could live again”.

“None of the exceptional results achieved and of which we are truly proud – stressed Mariella Enoc, president of Bambino Gesù – would never be possible without the generosity of donors and their families, called to the most altruistic of choices in the deepest moment of personal suffering. Their availability is the indispensable element for the organ transplant activity that in Italy treats more than 3000 patients every year”.