For the first time in Italy, a combined transplantation of two organs taken from a single living donor has been performed. This extremely complex and innovative procedure was carried out on December 18 at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo. The main protagonists of this extraordinary operation are a 37-year-old father, a Serbian citizen, and his seven-year-old daughter.
The father donated a kidney and a part of the liver, thereby enabling the girl to overcome a severe and rare genetic disease that had affected both organs, Italian media report.
The father and daughter are feeling well and have already been discharged from the hospital. The girl will remain in Bergamo for the coming months for follow-up examinations, but now she can finally lead a normal life.
The father and daughter, citizens of the Republic of Serbia, traveled to Bergamo at the request of the Serbian Ministry of Health.
“Today it is a true joy to see that our girl has regained her appetite and the desire to play,” said the father.
Both had no complications following the delicate procedure, La Stampa reports.
The girl had suffered for a long time from a rare genetic disease that affects both the liver and the kidneys, because of which she had to start dialysis as early as four years of age.
Due to the extraordinary nature of this operation, before the procedure, the medical staff had to wait for a positive opinion from a regional third-party commission, and then for approval from the prosecutor’s office in Bergamo.
As La Repubblica writes, the kidney transplant was performed first, followed by the part of the liver, and both organs were functionally implanted in the girl.
Such procedures are extremely rare in medicine: while kidney transplants from living donors are relatively common (because a person has two kidneys), a liver transplant from a living donor is more complex because it requires transplanting only a portion of the liver so that both individuals, the donor and the recipient, can function after the procedure.
In Italy, this is the first case in which a single living donor gave two different organs to their child.
In the world, such cases exist but are very rare and require the exceptional expertise of the team and the full consent of ethical and medical commissions.
In January 2023, a father gave a portion of his lungs to his five-year-old son in the same hospital in Bergamo, and it was the first such lung transplant from a living donor in Italy.
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Source: N1; Photo: Pixabay