After 224 very long days in hospital wards, operating rooms and highly complex medications, the Burns Center of the Niguarda Hospital in Milan experienced the decisive turning point linked to the dramatic fire on New Year’s Eve. Francesca, the Milanese student who celebrated her seventeenth birthday in the ward last June, was discharged and was finally able to return home.
The girl was the last of the twelve injured people taken into care by Lombardy healthcare facilities after the tragic fire that broke out during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in the Crans-Montana ski resort. With his return to the family, the solemn promise made to the parents by the regional councilor for Welfare Guido Bertolaso is fulfilled: to have all the children return to their families.
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The rescue machine and healthcare synergy
Behind the salvation of these 12 patients, 10 of whom were very young, was an unprecedented organizational machine that involved over 100 healthcare professionals mobilized simultaneously in the early stages of the emergency. The airlift guaranteed by the AREU allowed the rapid transfer by helicopter of the emergency injured to the Emergency Room and Intensive Care, allowing their immediate stabilization.
The clinical care plan then saw the close collaboration of the Milan Polyclinic Hospital and hyper-specialist departments such as Pneumology, Infectious Diseases, Plastic Surgery and Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry. A decisive contribution came from the Tissue Bank, which provided over 25,000 square centimeters of skin to perform the necessary surgical grafts on the skin devastated by the fire.
The numbers of a clinical miracle and rehabilitation
The clinical parameters only partially reveal the extraordinary dedication of doctors and nurses during this long journey: the internal teams have completed over 50 surgeries in total and at least 30 sedated medications for each patient, as well as hundreds of laser sessions and specialist checks. Although the hospitalization phase has concluded happily, the road to full recovery still remains complex and now requires profound physical and psychological rehabilitation. Several young people have already undertaken a targeted cycle of hand surgery with the help of Multimedica specialists, essential to counteract joint stiffness and restore full mobility to limbs compromised by burns.
The memory of the victims and the commitment of the institutions
Despite the understandable climate of joy that accompanies the resignation of the last patient, the entire healthcare community does not intend to forget the drama of their peers who did not make it on that tragic night. The memory of those broken young lives must represent a permanent reminder of safety, encouraging institutions to strengthen prevention so that similar tragedies are never repeated again.
