“In the heart of another”

On the night of November 14, 1985, Professor Gaetano Thiene, a cardiovascular pathologist at the University of Padua, received Ilario Lazzari’s diseased heart from Professor Vincenzo Gallucci at the end of the transplant, in order to analyze it for diagnostic purposes and subsequently preserve it in the Morgagni Museum of Human Anatomy. Pathological Anatomy Section, it was the first time in history that a pathologist had received not just a simple biopsy sample but the entire heart of a living person.

The heart was affected by dilated cardiomyopathy, one of the heart diseases that most frequently leads to transplantation due to heart failure refractory to conventional medical therapy. As the name suggests, in this heart disease, the heart has dilated chambers, particularly the left ventricle, and the muscle that composes it is inefficient in its mechanical pumping activity due to the ‘laziness’ of the cells that make it up. The cardiomyocytes appear to have an empty cytoplasm due to the loss of contractile proteins. The disease can have a mixed aetiopathogenesis, both genetic and acquired, and today family studies and genetic testing are recommended for affected patients for the purposes of early diagnosis and prevention.

Since then, all native hearts from heart transplants have been studied for accurate diagnosis and stored for further diagnostic investigation at the archive of the UOC of Cardiovascular Pathology, Padua Hospital, Department of Cardio-Thoracic-Vascular Sciences and Public Health, University of Padua.