In Ukraine, for the first time, operations were performed on a baby who couldnʼt fully breathe

At the National Childrenʼs Specialized Hospital "Okhmatdyt", for the first time in Ukraine, a chest operation was performed on a child with asphyxial thoracic dystrophy.

The press service of the hospital wrote about it.

The boy was born with a rare syndrome — asphyxial thoracic dystrophy, which occurs no more than once in 130,000 newborns. Such children have a small bell-shaped chest, which limits the work of the lungs.

"The natural course is very severe, especially if symptoms develop in children under 1 year of age. "Usually, small patients die from respiratory failure, repeated pneumonias or become dependent on artificial respiration devices," Okhmatdyt noted.

For the first time in Ukraine, hospital specialists applied a method of surgical treatment to an infant — lateral thoracic expansion. The operation allows to successively increase the volume of both halves of the chest. Such interventions were carried out only in a few leading clinics in the USA, Britain and Italy.

The child underwent surgery in two stages: at 1.5 months on the right side and at 2.5 months on the left.

"The essence of the operation is that 6 ribs are successively intersected in a checkerboard pattern. And then they are connected by special metal structures in such a way that one half-long rib is made from the long segments of two ribs. Due to this, the volume of the chest increases," explained surgeon Yevhen Rudenko.

Today, the boyʼs postoperative wounds have healed, he is training to breathe on his own, and examinations have shown that the volume of the chest has increased.

• At the beginning of January, a unique one-time operation was performed in Ukraine — a child was transplanted with a liver and a heart defect was corrected.