Rescue under fire: how Ukrainian doctors transplanted hearts, livers and kidneys to children during an air raid

For the fourth year, a war has been raging in Ukraine, which every day endangers the most valuable thing – human life. However, even under the constant threat of rocket attacks and bombings, doctors continue to work without stopping for an hour. The value of rescue is most acutely felt when it comes to children – the most vulnerable category of patients whose lives depend on timely and accurate medical care. In hospitals located in the zone of potential danger, doctors save the lives of small patients every day. One such case, which happened on the night of July 10 in Kyiv, is impressive for its courage, precision and professionalism. Just when Russian rockets were flying at the capital, other silent but no less dramatic battles for life were taking place in the medical operating rooms.

On the night of July 10, during another massive attack by Russian troops on Kyiv, three transplants were performed on children at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital and the Heart Institute. Explosions rang out in the capital, residential blocks burned, but surgical teams had no right to wait for the shelling to end. The heart can’t wait.

About the course of these complex operations reported doctors It all started with an urgent heart transplant. The director of the Institute of the Heart, Borys Todurov, delivered the organ to the operation himself – a video of him carrying the donor heart against the background of a fire outside the window, taken around three o’clock in the morning, quickly went viral on social networks. Behind him – clouds of smoke from the hits of kamikaze drones and fragments of rockets, in front – an operating room, where a 12-year-old girl was waiting for a heart.

“The liver and kidneys can be kept outside the body for a certain time – up to 6 and 10 hours, respectively. But the heart cannot be outside the body for more than three hours. That is why Boris Todurov immediately went with the heart to the patient. Meanwhile, we started the liver and kidney transplantation.” – explained Oleg Godik, a transplant doctor at the National Children’s Specialized Hospital “Okhmatdyt”.

The donor was a four-year-old girl who was declared brain dead. Her parents agreed to a transplant of all three organs — heart, liver and both kidneys. It was an extremely difficult and at the same time responsible moment for doctors, because the quality and efficiency of operations depended on every minute.

Operating rooms in “Okhmatdyt” are located on the seventh floor, where there is everything necessary for complex procedures: a sterile environment, a full set of surgical instruments, anesthesia equipment. According to the pediatrician, transplant coordinator Anastasia Morozova, it is physically impossible to conduct such operations in a shelter. The cellars are not equipped appropriately, and most importantly, they do not allow maintaining sterility conditions. That is precisely why doctors worked in inpatient operating rooms, despite the alarm signals and the sounds of explosions outside the window.

All three transplants were completed successfully. The liver was transplanted to a 16-year-old girl who urgently needed a new organ due to her critical condition. A 14-year-old boy received a kidney. The heart is a 12-year-old patient for whom transplantation became the only chance for life. Currently, all three children are in the intensive care unit under the supervision of doctors.

On the same night, Kyiv was subjected to serious missile and drone fire. It is known that two people died, and more than twenty people were injured. Eight districts of the capital were hit. While the rescuers were putting out the fires and evacuating the injured, within the walls of “Okhmatdyt” and the Institute of the Heart, they were fighting for something else – the future of three children who, despite everything, were given a second chance at life.

This case became another reminder of the colossal role played by Ukrainian doctors in wartime conditions. Their work is not only a professional duty, but also a manifestation of deep humanity, endurance and responsibility. And even in the darkness of air anxiety, they do everything to make life win over death.