A two-year-old boy has had to be put on life support after his transplant heart was mistakenly frozen in dry ice during an eight-hour journey across Italy, it has been alleged.
The toddler from Naples, locally named as Tommaso, was suffering from a worsening heart disease and had the new heart put in on December 23, only then to be rushed onto life support when doctors discovered the organ was damaged.
Tommaso’s mother Patrizia Mercolino has appealed to the Pope to help find a new heart for her son.
Italian police are investigating whether the donated heart was mistakenly packed in much colder dry ice instead of regular ice during its journey from northern italy to Naples – bringing its temperature down to -80C.
This would mean the heart would have been subject to freeze burns that have been described by sources as ‘carbonisation’ or severe tissue damage, Wanted in Rome said.
Mrs Mercolino told Italian TV: ‘My life is now dominated by pain and the desire to have my baby back home. I appeal to the Pope to help find a new heart for my son. That’s all I want.’
She has asked her lawyer to contact hospitals across Europe to see if a second heart is available.
Patrizia Mercolino has appealed to the Pope to help find a new heart for her son
Tommaso’s transplant heart was taken here to Monaldi hospital in Naples where he underwent surgery
Tommaso had been on a waiting list after being born with cardiomyopathy – a progressive heart disease that thickens the walls of the organ until it no longer pumps blood effectively.
A donor heart was found in December after a four-year-old boy drowned in a swimming pool in Bolzano in the Italian Alps.
The heart was transplanted into the sick young boy after being delivered to the Monaldi hospital in Naples, but it never worked.
‘They called me after the operation to say, “There is a problem — the heart does not start”. I didn’t ask too many questions,’ Mercolino told The Times.
The heart was found to have been transported in an ordinary plastic box instead of a specialised container that regulates the temperature on police investigation. There were indications that dry ice was used to refrigerate the heart rather than regular ice which would amount to a serious breach of protocol as the transport of organs is tightly regulated.
Because there was no temperature reading on the box transporters were using, they had no idea that the heart was falling to sub-zero temperatures, investigators claimed.
Six medics are now being formally investigated. There are three investigations open to establish where the blame lies along the chain of custody and to scrutinise potential administrative failures, Wanted in Rome said
Meanwhile, the boy has been clinging onto life through life support machines. But, tragically, Mrs Mercolino’s efforts to get her son a new heart could be in vain.
Doctors at the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu paediatric hospital in Rome said that the prolonged use of life support was causing other complications in the boy’s body, including lung, liver and kidney damage that make a second heart transplant too risky.
‘I hope those doctors are wrong,’ said Mercolino.
