A Golden Comeback: Skiing World Champion after Kidney Transplant

From those Ski World Championships which he had never thought to participate in a few months earlier, he returned with a gold medal around his neck. An extraordinary personal and sports achievement 5 months after the kidney transplant, a crucial milestone overcome thanks to a special organ donor: his wife. The story is that of a 49-year-old building engineer, Paolo Manera, from San Giacomo di Roburent (Cuneo), successfully operated at the Molinette hospital of the City of Health in Turin. On the track at the World Winter Championships for transplant recipients, on the snows of Bormio, in Valtellina. Where he outperformed the big favorites of the category, especially Austrians and Croatians. As a boy, he had practiced competitive skiing until the age of 8, but at the World Championships in Bormio, he would not even have been able to participate because the rules of the event, organized by a London company, only admit competitors at least one year after the transplant. The story "But the doctors gave their approval," explains Manera, "after all the checks and the preparation, together with my son. And so I got the pass. My body's reaction to the transplant was excellent, I have to thank my wife for the immense gift she gave me." Now he thinks back to the difficult days before the transplant, made necessary by a genetic disease: "Already 12 years ago my wife Giulia had offered to donate a kidney to me," Manera says, "I was afraid, but the competence and the assistance of the doctors convinced me. And now I must recognize that the transplant is the best possible medicine." The patient and the donor have different blood types, a situation that required a careful period of analysis and tests for both, before approval for the transplant. A process followed at the Nephrology Dialysis and Transplants of the Molinette hospital, directed by Professor Luigi Biancone, responsible for the Kidney Transplant Program. Then the operation, performed by the teams of vascular surgeons and urologists of the Molinette, led, respectively, by Dr. Aldo Verri and Professor Paolo Gontero, with the anesthesiological assistance of the team of Dr. Roberto Balagna. "The power of kidney transplantation, especially when it occurs from a living donor, continues to amaze us," comments Biancone, "In a short time it can erase years of disease and suffering, as this case clearly demonstrates. All this is made possible by the generosity of donors, thanks to whom numerous lives can be saved."