Marta Busso, near-graduate in Pediatrics at Regina Margherita, was able to solve a case which many doctors, although more experienced than her, failed to. Marta Busso was about to finish her dissertation with Marco Spada when she found out about the “impossible” case of Angel, a 22-year- old American nurse. Angel has been having severe and very painful muscle crises for 9 years that give her problems in walking, asthenia and are a risk to her kidneys. For years the nurse had been going in and out of hospitals and no one managed to find a diagnosis, that is until Marta sent to the New York Times a guess at the diagnosis. Her guess was much appreciated by the newspaper and
the Medicine School at Yale University. Meanwhile, Angel was admitted to hospital in Turin where she was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disease that causes a defect in the oxidation of fat acids in the muscles.
Marta’s diagnosis had been exact and thanks to a diet and medication Angel will be able to reduce the muscle pain. This story with a happy ending is told in an episode of Diagnosis on Netflix, tv series based on the column in the New York Times by Dr. Lisa Sanders (the inspiration behind the tv show Dr. House).