Dobrobut Patient Became a Posthumous Donor for Three People

At the Dobrobut medical network, doctors performed an organ explantation (organ retrieval) from a woman who died of a stroke. Thanks to this, three people received a chance to live.

A 67-year-old patient was admitted to the multidisciplinary Dobrobut hospital at 3 Sim’i Idzikovskykh Street after suffering a stroke. She was brought in critical condition with an acute cerebrovascular accident. Doctors fought for her life until the very end, but unfortunately, they were unable to save her. Her family then faced one of the most difficult decisions, requiring great courage and inner strength. The patient’s husband and daughter consented to organ donation.

Transplant teams from the Kyiv Medical Center and the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine worked at the Dobrobut hospital to retrieve organs for transplantation. The heart and two kidneys were transplanted to three people for whom transplantation was the only chance of survival.

One of the major challenges was preparing the heart for transplantation. The donor was elderly, so doctors needed to ensure that the organ could be safely transported and transplanted. To achieve this, Dobrobut vascular surgeons Olena Shapovalova and Andrii Basatskyi performed a posthumous coronary angiography and stenting of the affected coronary artery. Without this procedure, the heart might have been unsuitable for transplantation.

A guard of honor was held for the patient who became a posthumous donor — a touching and important medical tradition symbolizing the highest gratitude and respect from medical staff, patients, and relatives toward a donor who gave others a chance at life after death.

“We express our condolences to the family and thank them for making such a difficult yet extremely important decision. In situations like this, we always fight for a person’s life until the very end. And when saving them is no longer possible, another very difficult but important opportunity appears — to save others. The family’s decision at that moment was an act of great strength and humanity. Thanks to such decisions, three people received a chance to live,” said Yelyzaveta Plechysta, transplant coordinator and Head of the Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Department at the Dobrobut medical network.

This was already the third organ explantation performed at Dobrobut, with the first one taking place in November 2021.

Each such case is not only a complex medical procedure, but also a step toward developing a culture of posthumous organ donation in Ukraine — something upon which the lives and health of thousands of patients awaiting transplantation depend.