Despite night explosions, drone and missile flights, despite sirens, Okhmatdyt doctors performed the first organ transplantation from a 4-year-old girl. As reported by the medical institution, three children were saved at once, having received liver, kidney, and heart transplants, UNN reports.
Details
The day before, at the National Children's Specialized Hospital "Okhmatdyt", for the first time since the diagnosis of brain death in a child, parental consent for posthumous donation was obtained, and organ transplantation to other children was performed.
Late last week, a 4-year-old girl from Zhytomyr region was brought to Okhmatdyt. On the night of July 10, a council was forced to declare the patient's brain dead. This was the first case in our hospital when our doctors, together with psychologists, were able to go through a difficult path with the family and obtain parental consent for posthumous donation. This decision is heroic. It saved three lives at once.
After signing the consent, the painstaking work of Okhmatdyt specialists and the Ukrainian Transplant Coordination Center began. It was necessary to ensure logistics, select recipients, and organize everything under air raid alerts and missile attacks.
The Unified State Information System for Transplantation (EDIST) identified recipients, two of whom were already in Okhmatdyt:
🔹A 16-year-old girl with Wilson-Konovalov disease had the first emergency status. She was in intensive care, and this was her only chance to survive. She received a liver transplant.
🔹A 14-year-old boy had been living on dialysis at Okhmatdyt for over seven months. He received kidney transplants.
🔹That same night, a 12-year-old girl with the first emergency status received a heart transplant at the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
The operations lasted over 13 hours.
Our recipients were very difficult. And I am sincerely grateful to the parents for understanding that their decision gave a chance at life to three children. This is the first case when brain death diagnosis, organ retrieval, and transplantation were performed at Okhmatdyt.
Despite night explosions, drone and missile flights, despite sirens — the medics did not stop. After all, every minute is important: the less time organs are outside the body, the more chances of success.
We express our sincere gratitude to the family, who, despite the unspeakable pain, chose the path of good. Bright memory to the little donor.