7:57 p.m. ET, July 10, 2023
A 6-year-old underwent a first-of-its-kind heart transplant in Ukraine despite the raging war
From CNN's Radina Gigova and Svitlana Vlasova
The mother of the donor — a 4-year-old boy — visits the 6-year-old girl who received his heart.
Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Center
Amid the raging war and constant threat of Russian missiles, a successful heart transplant has been performed on a patient just 6-years-old — a girl who received the heart of a 4-year-old boy, authorities with the Heart Institute of Ukraine's Ministry of Health announced on Monday.
The 6-year-old girl, who is a patient at the Heart Institute in Kyiv, was on the waiting list for a donor. She received the heart of the boy, whom doctors had declared brain dead after suffering a brain aneurysm, the Heart Institute said.
Ukrainian doctors operate on a 6-year-old girl who needed a new heart. The operation lasted for about three hours.
Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Center
Doctors began preparing for the heart transplant after securing the permission of the boy’s parents. The operation took place on Sunday evening and lasted for about three hours, the Heart Institute said.
The Heart Institute said it was the first time in Ukraine that a heart transplant on children so young had been performed.
"This time, 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," the institute said.
The transplant was performed by a team of doctors led by Dr. Boris Todurov, chief scientist of the Department of Surgical and Minimally Invasive Treatment. He worked alongside 18 other staff members during the operation.
“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 also released images from the operation and a picture of the girl recovering after surgery. The picture of the girl after surgery also shows the mother of the boy standing next to her hospital bed, the Heart Institute said.
"The operation went well, and the new heart is beating in the girl's chest. And it is extremely touching that the mother of the deceased boy came to listen to her child's heart beating in the other chest," said Oksana Dmytrieva, chair of the Ukrainian Parliament's Subcommittee on Modern Medical Technologies and Transplantation Development, in an emotional post on Facebook. "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 transplanted to a 15-year-old boy from the Kirovohrad region, it added.
Postmortem transplants would not be possible without the relatives of donors making the decision "to save the lives of people they do not know after losing a loved one," Dmytrieva said. "This is the noblest manifestation of humanity. Especially when it comes to the loss of a child."
Since the beginning of 2023, 23 heart transplants have been performed for both children and adult patients, the Heart Institute said.
Cardiovascular surgeries during wartime: If an operation is already underway and air raid systems are activated, the operation cannot be interrupted and will continue even if there is an attack on the city, the Heart Institute told CNN on Monday.
If the operation hasn't started, the team of doctors and the patient wait for the air raid sirens to stop and only then do they begin the operation.