Unique surgery: a baby was operated on in Lviv with the help of a robot surgeon
- Svitlana Ivanchenko
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20:51, 29 May, 2025
A doctor performs a unique operation. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's HospitalFor the first time in Ukraine, surgeons have performed a life-saving operation on a baby with a rare birth defect using the Da Vinci robotic system.
The operation was performed at St Nicholas Children's Hospital in Lviv, giving a girl from Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast named Oksanka a chance to live.
Immediately after her birth, her parents noticed yellowing of the skin and whites of her eyes. Doctors diagnosed her with biliary atresia. This is an extremely dangerous pathology in which bile cannot be excreted from the liver, which leads first to its destruction and then to the death of the child. The only chance for Oksana was an urgent operation using the method of Japanese surgeon Morio Kasai, which is performed only in the first months of life.
The doctor performs a unique operation. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's Hospital
Doctors with the newborn girl and her mother. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's Hospital
Doctors with a newborn girl and her mother. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's HospitalOn 6 May, Lviv doctors performed this complex procedure using the Da Vinci robot. This approach allows for the most accurate formation of a new channel for the outflow of bile, with minimal tissue trauma and without significant blood loss. This is how such operations are performed in clinics in Japan, the USA and South Korea. Now — in Ukraine.
Although the intervention does not completely eliminate the disease, it gives the child a chance to live until the liver transplant that will be needed later. Now the girl is feeling well: the yellowing of her body and eyes has decreased, her condition is stable and there is no threat to her life. She will be examined by doctors every month.
Doctors say that about a hundred operations have already been performed on children with the help of Da Vinci, and this is one of the highest rates in Eastern Europe. And Lviv doctors are currently the only ones in Ukraine who perform robotic surgeries on children.
As a reminder, the Mykolaiv Regional Clinical Hospital has started diagnosing the cause of ischaemic stroke. Doctors can help patients in the first 4-6 hours after the first symptoms appear.