In September 2016, thanks to Cieli Azzurri’s support, Dr. Anna Morandi traveled to Denver, Colorado, to attend a Surgical Master Course organized by the city’s Children’s Hospital.

The Master mainly dealt with anorectal malformations, with a particular focus on the main surgical procedures used to deal with these conditions. Pathologies of this kind are very serious and potentially very invalidating, so it is extremely important to establish specific therapeutic programs ever since the birth of the patients. This is only possible, however, if the problem is appropriately diagnosed during the pregnancy period. By keeping up-to-date with the most recent developments in applied research, surgeons attempt to maximize their ability to detect conditions of this sort in time, and consequently to offer the best possible care. Specific courses like the aforementioned Master are therefore tremendously important for professionals operating in this field.

In Italy, the Policlinic Hospital's Pediatric Surgery Unit, headed by Dr. Ernesto Leva, is the Nation’s leading facility for cases of this kind. For this reason, even though anorectal malformations are very rare (only 1 in 4000 newborns suffers from this condition), the Unit follows an average of 20 to 25 cases of this kind every year. It is therefore very important that the professionals working in this Unit, like Dr. Morandi, have the possibility of developing new and more advanced techniques for dealing with these cases by taking part in specific courses like the Master in question. It is for this reason that Cieli Azzurri supports initiatives of this kind, within the context of our “The Fetal Surgery Project”  The cases discussed in this article are incredibly delicate, both for the pathology’s seriousness and for the patients’ extremely young age. This makes the personnel’s professional training immensely important, and taking part in courses of this kind gives them the opportunity to learn from some of the world’s leading experts in the field. Our project’s objective is to support these efforts, hoping that it eventually leads to an improvement in the young patients’ quality of life.