Patient dies after receiving transplanted 'sick' heart (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, September 27 - A 60-year-old cardiac patient died in a Rome hospital after being given the transplanted heart of a man who died of brain damage after a heart attack, sources said Wednesday - although medical officials insisted the heart was healthy. The heart was removed at Milan's San Raffaele Hospital and given to the man at Rome's San Camillo Hospital. Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin called the case "serious and unacceptable" and said there would be an inquiry. The man's relatives have filed a complaint and prosecutors have opened a probe. The head of the national transplant centre, Alessandro Nanni Costa, said "the heart was deemed normal by a scan, and fit to be transplanted".
    The heart "was in perfect condition, healthy and with all the parameters to be transplanted," San Camillo heart surgery unit chief Francesco Musumeci said, saying that media reports that it was unhealthy were "totally false".
    But a Rome court-ordered forensic consultation has established that the heart was unfit to be transplanted, sources said Wednesday. The report has been sent to Rome prosecutors probing the case. The had of the Italian donors group AIDO, Flavia Petrin, said Italian transplant medicine "is now one of the pillars of the national health system, with excellent results at an international level".
    photo: San Raffaele Hospital in Milan