Transplantation is becoming more affordable due to the partnership of doctors from different regions

Sixteen organ transplants were performed by Ukrainian specialists in sixteen days, saving the lives of patients for whom the transplant is the only chance to return to a full life.

Multidisciplinary teams of Ukrainian doctors, often specialists from different regions of the country, work during such operations.

According to the Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Center, a heart and two kidneys were transplanted at the Volyn Regional Hospital in late July. Teams from other medical institutions came to Lutsk for organ retrieval and transplant performing. The team of the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine (Kyiv) transplanted the heart. The kidneys were transplanted by specialists of the Heart Institute and Kyiv City Clinical Hospital No. 1 together with their Volyn colleagues. Such a combination of efforts of doctors from different regions in one operating room gave a chance for a new life to two residents of Kyiv and a patient from the temporarily occupied Kherson region.

Heart and kidney transplants in the Ternopil Regional Hospital were performed with the participation of specialists from the Kyiv City Clinical Hospital No. 1, the second kidney from the deceased donor was transplanted at the Kyiv City Center for Nephrology and Dialysis.

When the first heart transplant took place in the Ternopil Regional Hospital last month, local doctors were helped by colleagues from the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery.  The man who had his heart replaced at the time is already at home.

During multi-organ transplantation at the National Institute of Surgery and Transplantology named after O. O. Shalimov, for the first time, organ retrieval was carried out in the Irpin City Hospital (Kyiv region), restored after the occupation.  Kidneys and liver were received by patients from Zakarpattia and Mykolaiv region.

Also in the first days of August, four organs were transplanted in the First Medical Association of Lviv. Among the patients is a 12-year-old boy whose kidneys failed after suffering a sore throat. Liver was transplanted to a woman from Zakarpattia. Then Lviv residents were helped by surgeons from the capital's clinical hospital “Feofania”.

Currently, organ transplantation in Ukraine is carried out by 32 institutions. Doctors with more experience are involved in transplants in hospitals in other regions, and partnership in the operating room makes it possible to conduct technologically complex interventions in regional clinics. The selection of donor-recipient pairs is carried out automatically by the Unified State Transplantation Information System.

A total of 182 organ transplants have been performed since the beginning of the year, half of them from a deceased donor. Most of the transplants were performed in the First Medical Association of Lviv and the National Institute of Surgery and Transplantology named after O. O. Shalimov. We express our condolences and gratitude to the relatives of deceased donors for making a difficult but important decision to save the lives of others.