An organ harvest was performed at the San Marco Hospital in Catania about a very elderly person who died due to complications from a cerebral hemorrhage, whose family members immediately and with great civic sense agreed to the donation.
Given his advanced age, the patient underwent a careful evaluation of the clinical characteristics, including intraoperative histological investigation of the liver, which confirmed the suitability of the organ for transplantation.
This type of removal of organs from people who are very old, the so-called “great elderly”, presupposes that there is an expert technical and organizational capacity, capable of valorising all the donations so generously expressed by the donors or their family members after the death of one’s relative, with the aim of giving effective responses to people waiting for a transplant.
The multidisciplinary team of the AOUP “G. Rodolico – San Marco” of Catania has been working in this direction for years, to ensure that every donation can be optimized and that citizens can express their wishes for donation during their lifetime, showing their solidarity towards people who are sick but have the possibility of continuing their existence.
The Commission for the assessment of brain death was composed of the medical directors Maria Luisa Maniglia of the medical direction, Alessandro Conti anesthesiologist and resuscitator and the neurologist Daniela Fatuzzo. The team that carried out the sampling was made up of doctors from San Marco, the anesthetist Maria Antonietta Orban and the anatomist pathologist Loredana Villari and the sampling surgeon from the Ismett of Palermo, Ivan Vella. The Ismett team that carried out Once the sample was taken, she then returned to the Sicilian capital with the liver and by helicopter from San Marco itself, with a significant reduction in the cold ischemia times of the removed organs which guarantees better preservation and usability.
