On December 24, 2019, at the Kovel Territorial Medical Association’s hospital, a team of specialists of the Heart Institute, led by the director of the Institute, Professor Boris Todurov, successfully completed a heart transplant to a recipient with severe dilated cardiomyopathy. This surgery became the first heart transplantation in Ukraine in the last 15 years.

• Professor Todurov’s team included:
• Head of Organ and Tissue Transplantation Department, Cardiac Surgeon Gavrylo Kovtun;
• Head of the intensive care unit Igor Kuzmich;
• Head of the Circulatory and Extracorporeal Treatment Unit Oleksander Druzhyna;
• Head of the anesthesiology department Mykola Goncharenko;
• Cardiac surgeon Anton Shpachuk;
• Resuscitation doctor Yevhen Boyarchuk;
• Operating room sister Natalia Kopelchuk.

After the operation, Professor Todurov noted, “Our heart transplantation has generated great resonance and interest. The patient is doing well, we are bringing him to the Heart Institute. We will continue treatment and rehabilitation in Kyiv. Thanks to all the team for their coordinated work.”

A heart donor was a patient with severe open brain injury, for whom local specialists reported brain death. The relatives consented to the operation to remove the organs of the deceased for transplantation and thus saved the health and lives of three patients at once, because the doctors of Kovel hospital simultaneously performed another donor kidney transplantation in another operating room, and the second kidney was transported to Kyiv by place to rescue another patient.