Greek student leaves hospital after lifesaving transplant in Italy

Eirini, a 28-year-old Greek student, has been discharged from Turin’s Molinette hospital after an emergency liver transplant saved her life. Her treatment brought together an organ donor and medical teams in Greece and Italy.

A student in the Netherlands, she had fallen critically ill while in Greece. Wilson’s disease, a rare inherited condition that causes copper to build up in the body, had led to liver failure. At a hospital in Athens, her condition rapidly worsened as other organs began to fail.

An appeal to Italy’s National Transplant Centre activated an existing transplant cooperation protocol between the two countries. Eirini was flown to Turin on a medical aircraft, arriving unconscious and needing a machine to breathe. A donated liver became available in a nearby Italian region, and just 12 hours after admission she was in the operating theatre. The transplant took about 10 hours.

Recovery was far from immediate. She spent three months in hospital as specialists across several fields treated medical and surgical complications. Now discharged and continuing her recovery, she is expected to return to Greece soon. She has thanked everyone involved in saving her life.