A heart stopped for 20 minutes, from a now deceased donor, gave life back to a man who was waiting for the transplant, otherwise condemned by heart disease. It is not science fiction, but what the team of Professor Gino Gerosa, of the "Centro Gallucci" in Padua, has managed to do with a procedure never used before: to make a heart that has remained for 20 minutes without any electrical activity beat again in the chest of a patient. The first case in Italy, the first in the world with such long heart muscle reactivation times.
The patient, a 45-year-old, already operated on in pediatric age and on the waiting list for 2 years, remains in intensive care, but the course is regular, "the heart works very, very well" assured Gerosa. "The exceptionality lies precisely in the timing" explained the professor - In the world the heart transplant from donor in cardiocirculatory arrest has been a reality for a while but is authorized after 3-5 minutes from the detection of a flat electrocardiogram. In Italy, the law requires you to wait 20". Times so long that it was thought it could not be done, "but we - added Gerosa - we believed in it and, once we had the authorization from the National Transplant Center, we succeeded at the first attempt".
The donor was a man struck by 'cardiac death', with contextual irreversible brain damage to make any other therapeutic procedure useless. It is important to reiterate - underlines the National Transplant Center - that the death of an individual is unique and coincides with the total and irreversible cessation of all brain functions. In fact, to determine death with cardiological criteria it is necessary to observe a complete absence of heartbeat and circulation for at least the time necessary for there to be with certainty encephalic necrosis such as to determine the irreversible loss of all encephalic functions. For this reason, explains the National Transplant Center, still-heart donation can only take place after a doctor has certified death by performing an electro-cardiogram prolonged for a time of at least 20 minutes (in most European countries this time is 5 minutes). This is considered the time of anoxia, after which it is considered there is certainly the death of the individual.
"This extraordinary result - said Gino Gerosa, pioneer of studies on the artificial heart - could lead to a 30% increase in the number of organs available for patients on the waiting list". It is, however, "a drop of water added to that bucket that serves us to give therapeutic answers to patients suffering from terminal heart failure who are waiting for a heart". The real solution, concludes the doctor, "will come when we have an artificial, total, Italian heart. The answer will be a mechanical heart, readily available, on the shelf. Then we will no longer be forced to wait for the death of a donor to give a solution to those waiting for the transplant".