Samaritan donates a kidney to a woman and saves her life: the tenth time in Italy

The Samaritan donor, who was followed throughout his journey by the Kidney-Pancreas Transplant Centre at Padua Hospital, underwent a rigorous clinical, immunological and psychological procedure before being admitted to the programme. As required by national protocol, two third-party commissions - one regional and one national - examined the candidature in detail. The final go-ahead came from the territorially competent court, which authorised the withdrawal after verifying the full freedom, gratuitousness and awareness of the choice. 'The harvesting procedure,' explains the National Transplant Centre, 'involves no particular risks and those who undergo it can return to a perfectly normal life.

After the magistrate's authorisation, the National Transplant Centre, headed by Giuseppe Feltrin, accepted the kidney donation. In this case, it was not possible to identify an incompatible donor-recipient couple to start a chain of cross transplants, as in previous cases; therefore, the organ was assigned according to the ordinary protocol to the first eligible patient on the waiting list at the Padua Transplant Centre.

This latest donation brings to ten the number of Samaritan donors who have made this choice in Italy since 2015. In total, Samaritan donations have made 30 kidney transplants possible, involving, in addition to the 10 donors, 21 donor-recipient pairs. "Every donated organ is received by the Transplantation Network with responsibility and gratitude, and this becomes even more true when this gesture comes from a Samaritan donor," comments CNT Director General Giuseppe Feltrin. "We are grateful to this person for his generous decision, and we are sure that in front of his story many will reflect on the inestimable value of organ donation. Samaritan donations are certainly unusual, but donation after death is a choice within everyone's reach: today, with 8,000 people waiting for transplants, giving one's consent to donate is more fundamental than ever'.

The donor recounted the reasons for his choice. 'Listening to the Gospel in church, in one of the passages about St John the Baptist,' he said by telephone during the press conference presenting the intervention, 'I had a sort of epiphany, and I thought: what if the robes of which the Baptist speaks were in my case the kidneys?' The idea, in fact, was also born 'when I made my last blood donation, which I was no longer able to do due to age limits. Having lived through the experience of my brother-in-law who died before a viable liver arrived, I developed the idea of becoming a Samaritan donor'.