Boy was born with heart defect

Shortly before Christmas, after a long wait, a donor heart was finally found for the boy, who was born with a heart defect. However, it was during transport incorrectly cooled and therefore seriously damaged. A team of doctors decided on Wednesday that a new operation to potentially transplant a new heart was pointless – also because other organs such as the kidneys were no longer functioning properly.

The medical team declares another operation pointless

The hospital in the southern Italian city said in a statement that the entire medical team was standing by the family “with respect and sincere sympathy in this moment of immeasurable pain.” Already in the early hours of the morning it was reported from the clinic that the little one’s condition had deteriorated rapidly. Cardinal Domenico Battaglia, the Archbishop of Naples, administered the anointing of the sick before his death.

The boy was in the hospital for almost two months, most of the time in a coma. There he was connected to a so-called ECMO machine, a kind of artificial lung and artificial heart. Since then, the hope was to find another donor heart as soon as possible – but that was not possible. Finally, the medical team came to the conclusion that another operation no longer made sense. His name was then removed from the waiting list of patients waiting for a donor heart.

Incorrectly cooled: minus 80 instead of plus 4 degrees Celsius

Domenico suffered from a serious heart defect, which is why it was clear that he needed a replacement organ. In December it looked as if everything could have a happy ending: In South Tyrol, another boy, four years old, with the same blood type, drowned. However, during transport from Bolzano to Naples, the donor heart was not cooled in conventional ice as usual, but came into contact with significantly colder dry ice: around 80 degrees minus instead of 4 degrees plus. This caused it to “literally freeze to death,” they said.

However, because the doctors had already removed the boy’s own heart, the irreparably damaged organ was implanted anyway. ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) kept him alive, but this can only be successful for a limited time. From the perspective of other doctors, another mistake was made. With a so-called Berlin heart – a kind of pump that pumps the blood from the broken heart through the body until a replacement organ is found – you can survive significantly longer.

Various public prosecutors are now investigating six doctors and paramedics. The cool box used for transport has been confiscated. According to media reports, this is an older model. Judicial circles said that the investigation would probably be expanded to include other suspects. The clinic in Naples has also initiated internal audits. The doctors involved will no longer undertake heart transplants until further notice.

More than 13,000 people are waiting for a new organ

What also caused outrage was that the parents said the clinic had left them in the dark for weeks as to why the transplant failed. The mother later reported that she had only found out everything from the newspaper. After the medical team’s decision not to operate again, she said: “I am truly devastated. What happened to my child must never happen again.”

Currently, more than 13,000 people in Europe urgently need a new organ. In Germany alone, according to the Organ Transplantation Foundation, more than 1,100 people were waiting for a donor heart at the end of the year. There are no exact figures as to how many children there are.