There is no panic or despair in the hospital, only confidence and absolute cohesion: Lviv cardiac surgeon told about the work during the war
Doctors are the people who, together with the military, help the most during the war. When half the country suffers from the occupiers, their bombings and air strikes, doctors often have to work without days off and rest. Vitaliy Petrov, a pediatric cardiac surgeon at the First Territorial Medical Association of Lviv, told us about how his work had changed during the war, what operations were being carried out and whether there were enough hospitals.
We have provided completely free care for children with heart disease
We fully agree with the guidelines of our country’s leadership that we must continue to do what we do best. That is why we continue our work. The pediatric cardiac surgery program at our hospital is fully operational, we provide assistance to children of all ages - from infancy - and varying degrees of complexity. We managed to fully provide free care to children with heart disease from any region of Ukraine and with problems of any complexity. This means that families do not pay for anything. There are visions and management of the hospital, and there are sponsors, various charities and volunteers, there is also humanitarian aid from abroad - all this has allowed us to provide the full range of care completely free of charge.
What changed during the war was that the geography of aid expanded. Because, unfortunately, due to such circumstances, many families from different regions of Ukraine are now in Lviv, and we provide assistance to families from Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv regions, etc. in almost a day. We help everyone who comes to us.
Our hospital is special because we have always had cooperation with various volunteers and philanthropists and it continues. The number of various non-governmental programs that join our hospital is constantly increasing. These are both Ukrainian and foreign partners who help us the most.
Unfortunately, the production of some medicines in Ukraine has really stopped now and this is a big risk. We use our stocks of medicines, and our partners help us with this - this is the way out for us.
Indeed, there has always been a shortage of donors, we have always campaigned for it, and sometimes the doctors themselves have been donors of blood and blood products. Now the consciousness of society has awakened, there are also many volunteers who donate blood of various groups, even rare groups. And this is a huge help to the hospital, which allows you to provide uninterrupted care.
We have all the doctors on staff, except the mobilized ones
Our hospital has different departments, for example, I deal with children’s hearts, but there is a profile of adult cardiac surgery, vascular surgery and so on. We have a multidisciplinary hospital with a huge number of specialized departments.
The field in which I work is pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery. These are children with congenital and sometimes acquired diseases of the heart and large blood vessels. They can be divided into such groups as life-threatening, where you need to operate urgently in the coming days, otherwise there may be the worst consequences. This may mean that the child must be operated on in the first days of life after birth, otherwise she simply has no chance, and we also perform such operations. There is also another group - these are other defects that are not life-threatening, but still require some intervention. These operations can be performed semi-routinely, ie in the coming weeks or months, or planned - where our schedule has time for hospitalization.
We have all the doctors on staff, except the mobilized ones, or those who wanted to help our military medics. Moreover, the staff of our hospital is increasing due to those doctors who are temporarily unable to work in the eastern regions of Ukraine, and they came to our hospital. Our hospital is one of the largest in western Ukraine, doctors from other regions work with us. Therefore, in fact, the number of doctors who work around the clock has even increased.
It is difficult to count how many operations were performed, but it is a daily job. We carry out operations of the most various degree of complexity. But any heart operation cannot be easy, because the cost of error is very high.
During air raids, we continue operations
There are really more patients and jobs than before the war, it is felt. On the one hand, there are really more patients, because, unfortunately, in other regions of Ukraine patients cannot always receive help, so they are now looking for it in Lviv. But on the other hand, we tend to have some fears of being treated in hospital, and that’s not quite right, because it can affect the quality of care and the fact that care is given to the patient at a later stage, which will be bad. for the body.
Children are transported to us after combat injuries from the east of Ukraine. We have such patients . Initially, they are provided with primary care, stabilize the child’s condition, and then, for more expert and planned treatment, they are transported to our hospital. Where we perform surgery.
And even if an air raid is declared, we will continue operations because the intervention cannot be stopped, whether there is an alarm or not. The first step is to complete the procedure and provide assistance. If the intervention has not started yet, then, of course, our hospital has certain evacuation protocols, and we follow them. There are rooms, shelters where we evacuate.
There is no panic or despair in the hospital. There is only confidence and absolute cohesion. No negatives and despair, we overcome all this, provide maximum assistance and we are confident that everything will end exclusively with our victory!
Written by Anastasia Ishchenko
More news
We have provided completely free care for children with heart disease
We fully agree with the guidelines of our country’s leadership that we must continue to do what we do best. That is why we continue our work. The pediatric cardiac surgery program at our hospital is fully operational, we provide assistance to children of all ages - from infancy - and varying degrees of complexity. We managed to fully provide free care to children with heart disease from any region of Ukraine and with problems of any complexity. This means that families do not pay for anything. There are visions and management of the hospital, and there are sponsors, various charities and volunteers, there is also humanitarian aid from abroad - all this has allowed us to provide the full range of care completely free of charge.
What changed during the war was that the geography of aid expanded. Because, unfortunately, due to such circumstances, many families from different regions of Ukraine are now in Lviv, and we provide assistance to families from Odessa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv regions, etc. in almost a day. We help everyone who comes to us.
Our hospital is special because we have always had cooperation with various volunteers and philanthropists and it continues. The number of various non-governmental programs that join our hospital is constantly increasing. These are both Ukrainian and foreign partners who help us the most.
Unfortunately, the production of some medicines in Ukraine has really stopped now and this is a big risk. We use our stocks of medicines, and our partners help us with this - this is the way out for us.
Indeed, there has always been a shortage of donors, we have always campaigned for it, and sometimes the doctors themselves have been donors of blood and blood products. Now the consciousness of society has awakened, there are also many volunteers who donate blood of various groups, even rare groups. And this is a huge help to the hospital, which allows you to provide uninterrupted care.
We have all the doctors on staff, except the mobilized ones
Our hospital has different departments, for example, I deal with children’s hearts, but there is a profile of adult cardiac surgery, vascular surgery and so on. We have a multidisciplinary hospital with a huge number of specialized departments.
The field in which I work is pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery. These are children with congenital and sometimes acquired diseases of the heart and large blood vessels. They can be divided into such groups as life-threatening, where you need to operate urgently in the coming days, otherwise there may be the worst consequences. This may mean that the child must be operated on in the first days of life after birth, otherwise she simply has no chance, and we also perform such operations. There is also another group - these are other defects that are not life-threatening, but still require some intervention. These operations can be performed semi-routinely, ie in the coming weeks or months, or planned - where our schedule has time for hospitalization.
We have all the doctors on staff, except the mobilized ones, or those who wanted to help our military medics. Moreover, the staff of our hospital is increasing due to those doctors who are temporarily unable to work in the eastern regions of Ukraine, and they came to our hospital. Our hospital is one of the largest in western Ukraine, doctors from other regions work with us. Therefore, in fact, the number of doctors who work around the clock has even increased. It is difficult to count how many operations were performed, but it is a daily job. We carry out operations of the most various degree of complexity. But any heart operation cannot be easy, because the cost of error is very high.
During air raids, we continue operations
There are really more patients and jobs than before the war, it is felt. On the one hand, there are really more patients, because, unfortunately, in other regions of Ukraine patients cannot always receive help, so they are now looking for it in Lviv. But on the other hand, we tend to have some fears of being treated in hospital, and that’s not quite right, because it can affect the quality of care and the fact that care is given to the patient at a later stage, which will be bad. for the body.
Children are transported to us after combat injuries from the east of Ukraine. We have such patients . Initially, they are provided with primary care, stabilize the child’s condition, and then, for more expert and planned treatment, they are transported to our hospital. Where we perform surgery.
And even if an air raid is declared, we will continue operations because the intervention cannot be stopped, whether there is an alarm or not. The first step is to complete the procedure and provide assistance. If the intervention has not started yet, then, of course, our hospital has certain evacuation protocols, and we follow them. There are rooms, shelters where we evacuate.
There is no panic or despair in the hospital. There is only confidence and absolute cohesion. No negatives and despair, we overcome all this, provide maximum assistance and we are confident that everything will end exclusively with our victory!
Written by Anastasia Ishchenko
More news