In Cherkasy, an adult patient had a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor: it’s the first time in Ukraine

Doctors at the Cherkasy Oncology Dispensary performed a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor. It's the first time such a procedure has been carried out in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Bone Marrow Donors Register (UBMDR) and the founder of the NGO iDonor All-Ukrainian donation platform, Iryna Zaslavets.

The transplant was performed by doctors from the Cherkasy Regional Oncology Dispensary and the Okhmatdyt Clinic. The procedure was fully funded from the state budget.

The patient is an 18-year-old Elina from the Cherkasy region, who fell ill with acute myeloid leukemia (blood cancer) in September 2019. The situation was complicated by gene mutations.

After chemotherapy at the Okhmatdyt Clinic, cancer receded. Remission began, but the mutation persisted. The girl received maintenance therapy. However, in May this year, she had a relapse. The only chance was a bone marrow transplant. There were no donors in the family.

Zaslavets noted that earlier it was necessary to go abroad for such a procedure, but the girl's condition didn't allow it. In the end, with the efforts of UBMDR specialists, they managed to find a joint donor, a guy from Germany.

Note

Organ transplant operations in Ukraine have been possible since April 2019, when the Law of Ukraine "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Concerning the Application of Human Anatomical Material Transplantation" came into force. It, in particular, regulates organ transplantation from a deceased person.

In 2019, for the first time in 15 years, a heart transplant was performed in Kovel. At the end of December, Lviv doctors performed the first liver transplant operation in western Ukraine. And in April, Ukrainian doctors transplanted a bone marrow for the first time in 13 years.