"Burnt Heart", solidarity with the cardiac surgeon who operated on Domenico: parents display photos of the saved children

They are called Gaia, Gabriele, Michele, Karol, and Gioia and they all have one thing in common: they were operated on and saved by cardiac surgeon Guido Oppido. Their photos, even in the arms of that doctor, were displayed today in front of the Monaldi Hospital in Naples by their parents who, once again, express solidarity with the head physician involved along with six other colleagues in the sad case of Domenico Caliendo, the two-year-and-four-month-old boy who died last February 21 after a failed heart transplant performed on December 23, 2025.

This morning, about a hundred dads and moms with their children, worried about their children's future, some wearing a white shirt with a red heart, wanted to be present at this sit-in also to demand an end to the media witch hunt.

“We also ask for truth for Domenico - explains Cinzia to ANSA - but Professor Oppido has given light and hope back to our lives: justice should take its course but in the appropriate venues.” Cinzia is the mother of an 11-year-old girl who became a patient of Oppido in Bologna: “My daughter has undergone 14 surgeries, between heart and brain. Oppido operated on her for the first time in 2015, at Sant'Orsola in Bologna, where I went because I was given no hope in other hospitals. When he then moved to Naples, we followed him and in 2018 he implanted a pacemaker in my daughter.”

Cinzia and the other parents remind everyone that “those who have embarked on this media war forget that there are other children who need to be treated and this is particularly what cannot be overlooked.”

In front of the Monaldi, under the photos of some of the children who underwent surgery by the cardiac surgeon, a banner reads: “Oppido is untouchable”.