Our mission was to remind the world of the challenging times our country is going through and the conditions under which medicine operates during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and everyone witnessed the price we pay for this.
At the largest cardiac hospital in Canada, the Toronto General Hospital (Peter Munk Cardiac Center), the training was conducted under the guidance of the legendary cardiac surgeon, Dr. Tyrone David. In the American clinic Cedars-Sinai, the mentor was the brilliant Dr. Joanna Chikwe.
For this transplantation, the donor’s heart traveled a distance of over 300 km, which our team covered in just under 4 hours. In a groundbreaking move for Ukraine, we implemented the new Stanford technique, allowing for extended preservation and transportation time for the donor organ.
The recipient in critical condition was transported by ambulance. A 46-year-old woman was so close to death that the defibrillator went off 8 times in the past day.
We are happy that we had the opportunity to join such an event, to speak before the international community, and to talk about our experience in transplant coordination, which is gaining momentum every year in Ukraine.
During the internship, our specialists took part in daily operations and gained valuable experience in performing minimally invasive interventions. They had the opportunity to take part in operations on the internal thoracic artery and mitral valve plastic surgery using the da Vinci Surgical System robot.
A 58-year-old man from the Kyiv region, who suffered from ischemic cardiomyopathy, received a new organ. The patient fought for his life for more than a year, suffered several heart attacks, and was stented. But the condition kept getting worse.
Our team has undergone important training in echocardiography, endovascular methods of prosthetic valve replacement (TAVI) and mitral insufficiency correction (mitral clip), implantation of the most modern devices to support ventricles in patients with heart failure (Impella) and participated in the newest methods of aortic pathology correction (Exovasc), heart and liver transplants.
The main purpose of the event was to discuss controversial aspects of the management of patients with heart failure, in particular, drug therapy and indications for the use of devices and cardiac surgical interventions.
The team of cardiac surgeons decided to perform aortic valve prosthetics with aortic root enlargement using the Y-incision method. The operation was successful. An echocardiogram shows an excellent result.