Ukrainian Hospital Pushes Transplant Ambitions After Life-Saving heart Operation For Local Woman
Nov 12, 2025 — by Transplant News
WORLD NEWS – UKRAINE: A 56-year-old woman from the Prykarpattia region, Miroslava, was saved by a donor heart after physicians diagnosed severe, irreversible damage to her cardiac muscle and gave her only months to live without transplantation. She traveled to Kyiv, was placed on the waiting list and returned home briefly before being called back for the operation. Surgeons performed the transplant successfully; she was discharged on the 13th postoperative day, now undergoes regular follow-up and has resumed an active life.
The procedure was led by cardiothoracic transplant surgeon Vasyl Boyovych, who described the patient’s native heart as dilated and unable to pump effectively, a condition not amenable to medical therapy. Boyovych’s record includes dozens of lifesaving heart transplants carried out in Kyiv and on outreach missions, with periods when his team performed multiple transplants in a single week at the Shalimov Institute. He also completed training in lung transplantation during a 2022 fellowship in Boston, expanding his team’s technical repertoire.
The operation has become a focal point for expanded plans at the Ivano-Frankivsk Central City Clinical Hospital, where Boyovych now practices. Hospital leadership says the institution already has specialized equipment and a young professional team prepared to scale up services. Director Taras Maslyak confirmed intentions to create a comprehensive transplant center offering heart, kidney and combined heart–lung transplantation once physical space is increased; the facility already performs kidney transplants independently and receives patients from across Ukraine for cardiac care.
Clinicians cite a persistent systemic barrier: Ukraine’s consent framework for postmortem donation requires explicit written consent from donors during life or approval from close relatives after death. That presumption of refusal remains a critical constraint on increasing the supply of donor organs even as regional surgical capacity and expertise expand.
