A 10-year-old girl with a congenital heart condition and severe pulmonary malformation has been saved from certain death by a pulmonary self-transplant, the first time the operation has been performed on a paediatric patient, sources at a Genoa hospital said Wednesday. The operation was performed at the northwestern Italian city's Gaslini Hospital.

The doctors invented an innovative technique to save the girls' life, sources said. First they restored heart function and then that of the lungs with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) assistance and four operations that were all extremely complex, the sources said.