Lviv doctors perform unique lung transplant surgery from posthumous donor

For the first time, Ukrainian doctors performed a lung transplant operation from a posthumous donor on their own, without the help of foreign colleagues in Lviv. This is the second lung transplant operation of such complexity in Ukraine.

The Ministry of Health of Ukraine reported this on the Telegram channel.

The donor was a 54-year-old man who died of a stroke. His family agreed to donate organs to save lives.

This decision saved the lives of not only Oleksii from Kyiv, who received a lung transplant, but also four other people because, in addition to the lungs, the doctors managed to transplant the heart, liver, and kidneys successfully.

The department said that the historic operation, which lasted 16 hours, was carried out by the team of the First Medical Association of Lviv led by cardiac surgeons Roman Domashych and Ihor Humennyi.

"Oleksii Chernyshkov from Kyiv received the lung. He is 56 years old. He's the liquidator of the accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. He had total bullous emphysema — he could barely walk 30 meters on his own.

He is raising an 11-year-old son himself. He decided on the operation so that his boy would have a father. Currently, he is breathing on his own and feels excellent!" the statement emphasized.

Earlier, Rubryka reported that the first national rehabilitation center for patients with spinal injuries, i.e., with lesions of the spine and spinal cord, will be created in Ukraine in the Rivne region to help war veterans.

The rehabilitation center will be opened with the support of the World Health Organization in Ukraine and the British government at the Rivne Regional War Veterans Hospital.

Also, Ukraine launched an aesthetic medicine charity project to address war injuries of civilians and war veterans.  The Neopalymi project is an esthetic medicine project that involves professional specialists and a team of volunteers who communicate with future patients about their participation and uses the latest laser equipment and high-quality medical drugs.

To recap, according to the World Health Organization, during russia's full-scale invasion, the russian federation carried out 620 attacks on Ukraine's medical facilities. 

The Director of the Regional European Office of the WHO, Hans Kluge, stated at a press conference on the impact of the war on the health of the Ukrainian population that the key priority of the WHO is an urgent response to these numerous attacks.