In Padua, the world's first heart transplant from a non-beating donor to a fully beating heart
13.12.2024
After the success in Padua of the first transplant of a controlled non-beating heart last year, the news of December 11, 2024, is of the world's first heart transplant from a non-beating donor to a fully beating heart, again in Padua. The feat was accomplished by the team from the UOC Cardiac Surgery Department of the University Hospital of Padua, led by Gino Gerosa, professor at the University of Padua.
This revolution will improve the outcomes of heart transplants from non-beating donors by avoiding controlled heart arrest, eliminating ischemia and reperfusion damage both during extraction and transplantation, ensuring a quicker recovery of heart function, and enhancing post-operative cardiac performance.
"Gino Gerosa and his extraordinary team have, for the first time in the world, crossed a new frontier in cardiac surgery and transplantation. A new indelible page in the international history of this discipline has been written in Veneto. There are no words left to express the esteem and gratitude to Professor Gerosa, all the members of his team, and the University Hospital of Padua," said the President of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, in celebrating the world's first beating heart transplant, which took place in Padua.
The date of November 14, 1985, in Padua, when the cardiac surgery team led by Vincenzo Gallucci successfully completed Italy's first heart transplant, is now a part of history.
