Amid the raging war and constant threat of Russian missiles, a successful heart transplant has been performed on a 6-year-old girl in Kyiv, authorities with the Heart Institute of Ukraine’s Ministry of Health announced on Monday.
The three-hour operation, which took place on Sunday evening, gave the girl the heart of a 4-year-old boy, whom doctors had declared brain dead after suffering an aneurysm.
It was the first time a heart transplant had been performed in Ukraine on children so young, the institute said.
“The operation was also unique in that both the donor and the recipient were very young children, and the transplant required more effort from the doctors,” it added.
The transplant was performed by a team of doctors led by Dr. Boris Todurov, the chief scientist of the department of surgical and minimally invasive treatment.
“The operation went smoothly, the girl was extubated two hours after the operation,” Todurov said in a post on his official Facebook page.
The Heart Institute released images from the operation showing the mother of the boy whose heart was donated standing by the girl’s bedside.
“The operation went well, and the new heart is beating in the girl’s chest,” Oksana Dmytrieva, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s subcommittee on modern medical technologies and transplantation development, said in an emotional post on Facebook.
“It is extremely touching that the mother of the deceased boy came to listen to her child’s heart beating in the other chest … I have tears in my eyes from this photo,” she added.
Three more of the boy’s organs – two kidneys and a liver – were transplanted to two other children at another hospital in Kyiv, the National Children’s Hospital “Ohmatdyt.”
The two kidneys were transplanted to a 12-year-old boy from the occupied part of Kherson region.
“He had been waiting for a transplant for more than 3 years and lived at the Ohmatdyt,” the hospital said in a Facebook post. A liver was also transplanted to a 15-year-old boy from Kirovohrad region. (CNN)