It is a scientific miracle that took place between Sicily and Tuscany that saw the birth of Alessandra, this is the name of the baby girl born on August 30th and born to a young woman from Gela who received the first uterus transplant from a deceased donor.
Little Alessandra was born in Catania, in the 34th week of gestation, at the Cannizzaro hospital and is in an incubator, but her conditions - doctors say - are good. Her mother is called Albina. She is a 31-year-old from Gela affected by Rokitansky syndrome, a congenital disease that prevents the development of the uterus, but not the ovaries, discovered when she was 17 due to the lack of evidence of the cycle. Albina is the first woman to have received a uterus transplant from a deceased donor. First case of its kind in Italy and the sixth in the world. The five previous cases are three in the United States, one each in Brazil and the Czech Republic.
The donor was a Tuscan woman who died at the age of 37 in a hospital in Florence two years ago due to cardiac arrest. Her name was Alessandra and she had two children. This is why Albina and her husband Giovanni wanted their daughter to be named after the woman who allowed them to experience the great joy of becoming parents.
Mother Albina has released a video in which she appears smiling. Convalescing and in isolation for Covid, but radiant: "I'm recovering and I can't wait to go out to see my little girl and hug her," she says. The woman's husband and father of Alessandra doesn't know how to express his happiness: "I haven't slept since she was born - reveals Giovanni, 37, a farm laborer - and my heart is bursting in my chest". He speaks of a "miracle that came true". The choice of the name of his daughter, Alessandra, like the deceased woman, came naturally.
Joy also comes from Tuscany where the donor's family lives, a 37-year-old who died in hospital in Florence from a sudden cardiac arrest, mother of two children. "It's as if Alessandra had come back to life, a part of her lives again, we are happy too", says the woman's husband to Giovanni, who reports to her.
Pierfrancesco Veroux, professor of Vascular Surgery and Transplants at the University of Catania, who works at the Policlinico, confesses the “infinite emotion” he felt “after Alessandra’s first cry”. “Knowing that the uterus of a woman, who has unfortunately been dead for two years now – he observes – is still capable of giving life is something that goes beyond the possible and the unimaginable”. Catania is the first and, at the moment, only center in Italy where this type of intervention is possible thanks to the collaboration between the medical teams of the Policlinico and the Cannizzaro.
“An example of rare synergy,” says Veroux smiling next to Paolo Scollo who nods. In Italy there had been one birth from a uterus transplant, in Bologna in 2018, but it was a living donation between two identical Serbian twin sisters. Furthermore, both the surgery and the fertilization had taken place abroad, in Belgrade and Stockholm. Fewer than 80 uterus transplants have been performed in the world, and of these only 20% from a deceased donor. About thirty children have been born and six, with Alessandra, from an organ from a deceased donor. In Italy there are already five women waiting, but donations are still inadequate compared to requests. For Massimo Cardillo, director of the National Transplant Center (Cnt), the birth of Alessandra, from a scientific point of view, "is a success for the Italian Transplant Network" and "represents for women born without a uterus a concrete hope of being able to have a pregnancy and is yet another testimony of how transplant medicine and organ donation are a value to be promoted more and more".
Article published on 3 September 2022 - 10:22
