First successful lung transplant in Ukraine. Polish doctors helped

A 56-year-old man from Lviv suffered from irreversible lung damage. He hasn't been leaving home for years and lived thanks to oxygen therapy. Recently, his condition has deteriorated dramatically. Lung transplant was his only chance.

A heart surgeon from Ternopil, Ihor Humenny, who had taken part in the surgery, told a Lviv portal Zaxid the preparations for the operation had taken three years. The doctors had been preparing together with Polish colleagues "at a training facility in Zabrze, at the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases, led by Marian Zembala", who had carried out the first successful lung transplant in Poland in 1995.

On September 21, at the Lviv Ambulance Clinical Hospital, surgeons from Ukraine and Poland carried out a successful transplantation of both lungs of a 56-year-old patient. He took his first walk along a hospital corridor on Sunday. The man is in the middle of intensive recovery, but his respiratory tract is fully operational.

"This is our Polish and Zabrze contribution in Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and helping our fellow humans in need. I'm very happy and proud of my team - a leading team in Poland and Europe due to the number and quality of heart and lung transplants on children," said Professor Marian Zembala, who himself is one of the most esteemed Polish transplant surgeons.

He informed that a total of 35 Ukrainian doctors, cardiologists and heart surgeons associated with hospitals in Kovel and Lviv, trained for six months at the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases.

The doctors from Lviv hospital carried out their first transplant in February 2020. A mother donated her kidney to her 36-year-old son. At a website of the Centre for Transplantology, which is a part of the facility, one can see how many surgeries have been carried since then: the list includes, among other operations, six heart transplants, two livers, 22 kidneys, and one pancreas.

In September, a 13-year-old boy from Volhynia named Maxim underwent a heart transplant in September. The boy had suffered a stroke. The surgery was conducted by a team led by Boris Todurov from the Heart Institute, including a Lviv children heart surgeon Vitaly Petrov. The heart was donated by a 54-year-old man, who had died after suffering a stroke. His family had agreed to his heart being used.