“Healthy Heart” as a symbol of life

A heart became a symbol of February 14. For Ukrainian children, the “Healthy Heart” project, which was launched a year ago, became a symbol of a new life. Thanks to this project of Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center, 35 children with the diagnosis of “cardiac defect” have now become healthy. On the anniversary of the project, the children have recorded video messages to the leading heart surgeons in Ukraine, where they thanked the doctors for the happiness of being healthy and told of realizing their cherished dreams.

Just a while ago, such simple joys as sports and dancing, moving games with their peers and visiting kindergartens, were impossible for these kids. Any physical load led to short breathing and was a risk. After carrying out operations of occluder installation, which the Foundation had acquired, the kids quickly recovered and now they are healthy. On the anniversary of the “Healthy Heart” project the Center employees handed the children’s congratulations and gifts to specialists of the leading cardiologic clinics of the country - the Heart Institute, the Center of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. The heart surgeon Ihor Ditkovskyi was among those to whom a lot of words of gratitude from the rescued children were dedicated.

 “Every year about four and a half thousand children are born with a diagnosis of cardiac defect in Ukraine”, says Ihor Ditkovskyi, a heart surgeon in Amosov National Institute. “We may help 40% of them with the occluder installation - to make an operation in an endovascular way with a minimum health risk.”

Endovascular heart treatment has been practiced throughout the world for two decades already. With this operation, a small a tiny incision on the thigh is made, an implant occluder is guided through the artery to the heart and closes the defect. After that the patient recovers very quickly. This is not the case with the abdominal operation, you have to cut the sternum, stop a child's heart and then get it go again. Under this approach there are massively more risks and after-troubles, and the recovery period is long.

Unfortunately, because the occluder is expensive - its cost is about 100 thousand hryvnias - very few families with sick children can afford such low-traumatic surgeries. Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center goes on with providing assistance to them. Within the next few days, two more little girls will undergo surgery to install an expensive implant and presented with the healthy hearts.