World’s First Pulmonary Artery Transplant Successfully Performed in Rome

Rome: Doctors at Rome’s Sant’Andrea hospital have conducted a groundbreaking pulmonary artery transplant on a patient in their 70s with lung cancer. This procedure marks the first time such a transplant has been completed globally.

According to Ansa News Agency, the patient had a neoplasm that had infiltrated the pulmonary artery after undergoing a complete removal of the left lung. The innovative surgery was conceived by two young thoracic surgeons, Cecilia Menna and Beatrice Trabalza Marinucci, and was performed on July 17.

The surgical team was led by Erino A. Rendina, the director of thoracic surgery at Sant’Andrea and dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Psychology at Rome’s La Sapienza University. The donor artery for the procedure was sourced from Barcelona, where it had been preserved through cryopreservation.