Heart Transplant in Zaporizhzhia

In transplantology, there is no “tomorrow” — only hours.
Petro, a 56-year-old from Khmelnytskyi region, was waiting for his donor heart. And it appeared — in Zaporizhzhia.

Due to extremely challenging weather conditions, the team made a difficult but the only right decision: not to risk transporting the organ, but instead to bring the patient to the place where the heart awaited him.

On the night of January 9, the team of the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, together with Boris Todurov and the patient, set out for frontline Zaporizhzhia, to the Zaporizhzhia Regional Clinical Hospital. Hundreds of kilometers — carefully, with full concentration, and with the awareness that a human life was at stake.
After the successful surgery, Petro was transported back to Kyiv by ambulance. Today he is confidently on the path to recovery.

We express our sincere gratitude to our colleagues in Zaporizhzhia for their professionalism, support, and coordinated work:
• Head of the Cardiac Surgery Department of ZRCH, Honored Doctor of Ukraine, Viacheslav Osaulenko;
• Head of the Transplantation and Nephrology Department of ZRCH, Yevhen Haidarzhi;
• Director of ZRCH, Ihor Shyshka — for clear organization of the process;
• All doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, intensivists, nurses, orderlies, and transplant coordinators.
A special, boundless thank you to the donor’s family for their extraordinarily noble and courageous act. Thanks to your decision, the lives of three people were saved.

Even during blackout, even in the middle of the night, even in a frontline city — Ukrainian medicine continues to save lives.