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- Salvatore Gruttadauria, Duilio Pagano, Gaetano Burgio, Antonio Arcadipane, Giovanna Panarello, Ioannis Petridis, Davide Cintorino, Marco Spada, and Giovanni Vizzini.
- 1Abdominal Surgery and Organ Transplant, Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies, Palermo, Italy.
- Telemed J E Health. 2015 Jun 1; 21 (6): 499-502.
BackgroundPatients with growing and nonresectable liver hemangiomas should be followed up by a transplant center with extensive experience in complex liver disease. They could be treated on an emergency basis with orthotopic liver transplantation, with an expectation of good long-term results.Materials And MethodsWe describe the case of a 37-year-old woman with liver hemangiomatosis followed up for 8 years, who presented with bleeding requiring transfusions and developed hemodynamic instability. We listed her for emergency transplant before her sister's living donor work-up could be completed. A liver from a cadaveric donor became available at a small local hospital with no experience in organ donation. Tele-intensive care unit (tele-ICU) technology was used for providing clinical data electronically to physicians, nurses, and other critical care specialists, creating medication orders, and communicating with on-site caregivers to implement changes in donor care.ResultsThe recipient was transplanted on an emergency basis with a specific customization and application of the telemedicine system in the management of the organ procurement by the recipient team. Tele-ICU technology was used for providing an effective intensive care unit service, managing and stabilizing the deceased donor and allowing the procurement to be carried out uneventfully.ConclusionsTele-ICU technology could be a promising resource for emergency transplantation, reducing the urgent need for a living donation and allowing prompt recipient team management of the deceased donor. Our first tele-ICU case offers early confirmation of the feasibility of the telemedicine system in deceased-donor management.
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