Polish surgeons help conduct Ukraine’s first successful lung transplant

Oct 2, 2021 | Society

Ukrainian doctors trained in Poland have, with the help of Polish colleagues, conducted the first ever successful lung transplant in Ukraine.

The 57-year-old patent, housebound for years due to irreversible lung damage and kept alive through oxygen therapy, underwent the operation in Lviv on 21 September, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP). He is now in recovery but has already been able to enjoy his first walk.

“This is our contribution to the strengthening of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and support for those in need,” said Marian Zembala, director of the Silesian Centre for Heart Diseases in Zabrze, which has trained 35 Ukrainian cardiologists and heart surgeons.

Ihor Humennyj, one of the Ukrainian doctors, explained that preparations for the surgery lasted three years, reports TVN24. He added that they had been carried out in cooperation with the Silesian centre, which in 1995 performed Poland’s first lung transplant.

” I am very happy and proud of my team, [who are] one of the leaders in Europe in regard to the number and quality of heart and lung transplants in adults and children,” said Zembala, who has been director of the facility in Zabrze for almost three decades.

Zembala is himself one of the pioneers of Polish transplatology. He was part of a team of doctors led by Zbigniew Religa that carried out Poland’s first successful heart transplant in 1985.

The Ukrainian medics trained in Zabrze have performed a number of other successful transplants, reports TVN24, starting with a kidney donated by a mother to her son in February last year. Since then, they have conducted six heart transplants (including one on a 13-year-old boy), 22 of kidneys and one of a pancreas.

Main image credit: Pfree2014/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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