A 7-year-old girl injured herself while playing, and doctors at San Bortolo Hospital saved her eye. It was a difficult, almost desperate situation—a highly delicate case due to the severity of the trauma and the child's young age. In children, injuries and healing speed up incredibly, and if the timing is off, any attempt can be futile.
The girl's eye, torn and infected, was in danger of losing the eyeball due to infection. However, an exceptional surgery performed by the head of ophthalmology, Roberto Cian, along with the timely diagnosis by Dr. Michele Lenzi, worked a miracle. The seemingly unstoppable infection was halted.
The eye was reconstructed, regaining its aesthetics, and is expected to regain full functionality soon. Even now, the girl can distinguish lights and shadows, beginning to focus on images.
A delay of just a few hours could have resulted in irreparable loss of the eye. The girl was playing with her 4-year-old brother when an object fell from a shelf and struck her left eye.
She experienced acute pain and sudden loss of vision, leading to intense crying. Her mother noticed the bleeding, and her father observed the significant injury.
They rushed her to the hospital, where the emergency room triage nurses alerted Lenzi. On Saturday morning of last week, Lenzi promptly diagnosed the problem accurately: the cornea had been punctured, and the lens protruded.
The damages were severe and dangerous—an eye hemorrhage had invaded the retina, and fluid leaking from the wound had caused edema, triggering a serious infection. The optic nerve was at serious risk, and there was no time to lose. The operating room was prepared. At 11 a.m., Dr. Cian began the surgery. With perfect anesthesia, the girl fell asleep gently. The head surgeon repaired the structure, removed the infected parts, cleaned the eye shell, removed the destroyed lens, implanting an artificial "IOL" (Intraocular Lens). He completed the vitrectomy by removing the opaque vitreous body and, finally, used an endolaser to coagulate some peripheral areas of the retina affected by ischemia. Over two hours of high-level microsurgery.
Afterward, appropriate medical therapy was administered. Antibiotic eye drops were applied every hour.
"I was faced with a highly compromised situation," explains Dr. Cian. "Children are very reactive, and if an infection is present, deterioration can be rapid and devastating, with irreversible outcomes." The girl was then admitted to the pediatric surgery department, led by Dr. Fabio Chiarenza. Under the watchful eyes of nurses from the two departments of pediatric surgery and ophthalmology, she underwent ultrasounds and check-ups. The parents, he a manager and she a landscape science student, displayed courage, skill, and a remarkable level of composure, doing everything necessary for their daughter without succumbing to emotional distress.
The girl, lovely, intelligent, charming, full of life, began to smile, jump, and talk again. Her usual cheerfulness quickly returned. For Dr. Cian, it was the most beautiful gift—a colorful drawing on notebook paper from the girl. Sun, sea. And the dedication: "I love you."
(GdV, domenica 3 marzo)