SUM medical aid program brings specialists to patients in Ukraine (08/05/01)

SUM medical aid program brings specialists to patients in Ukraine

WEST ROXBURY, Mass. - Since its founding in 1991, Emergency Medical Aid for Ukraine (EMAU), a medical commission of the Ukrainian American Youth Association (SUM), has brought 63 American doctors, nurses, technologists and bioengineers to work in Ukraine.

Presently, five major hospitals in the Lviv Oblast are the primary sites for their humanitarian efforts. From May 26 to June 10, nine medical specialists worked alongside their Ukrainian colleagues, completing approximately 30 operations - many of them the first of their kind to be done in Ukrainian hospitals.

The operations included complicated plastic and reconstructive surgery on children and adults with severe burns, traumatic disfigurement and birth defects. The doctors also constructed specialized tissue-sparing total prostheses for children with bone cancer of the shoulder and spine. The medical team, prepared by EMAU director and organizer of the medical mission, Roman Dashawetz, encompassed six specialties and consulted on over 150 children and adults to choose those most in need of surgery.

Over two very busy weeks the team of specialists separated into groups to work at the Vynnyky Hospital for Invalids and Repressed, the Lviv Regional Specialized Pediatric Hospital, the Lviv Regional Pediatric Burn Center, the Chervonohrad Municipal Hospital and the Ukrainian Railroad Hospital. Two members of SUM, Mikola Cynajko and his daughter, Ivanka, helped all members in translation.

The medical volunteers included: H. Dennis Snyder, ear, nose and throat/plastic facial surgeon and director of Medical Missions for Children, a collaborating humanitarian group; Karen Brennan, certified registered nurse anesthetist; Julie White, laparoscopist/thyroid surgeon; Pratik Pradham, chief resident, ear, nose and throat/plastic facial surgeon; and Mr. Dashawetz, certified registered nurse anesthetist, all from Massachusetts.

Other team members were: Thomas Huntsman, plastic and reconstructive surgeon from New York; Christopher Furey, orthopedic spinal surgeon, and Margaret Walsh, RN, operating room nurse specialist, both from Cleveland, Ohio; and Guillermo Gaitan-Rodriguez, pediatric cardiologist, from Guatemala.

The goals of the mission were to establish practical programs, improve or introduce techniques for back and shoulder surgery and laparoscopy, reinstitute thyroid surgery as a specialty in Chervonohrad, and improve techniques of tissue expander implantation in children with burns, traumatic scarring, birth defects and other abnormalities.

Dr. Gaitan-Rodriguez's main goal was to initiate discussion and planning of a pediatric, cardiac, diagnostic and surgery center at the Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital. This physician's experience includes establishment of Guatemala's only pediatric cardiac diagnostic and surgery center; his training and collaboration at the Boston Children's Hospital will provide important contacts and support for the program in western Ukraine.

The now two-year-old laparoscopic project begun by EMAU in 1999 in Chervonohrad, a mining city, has seen great growth and improvement thanks to cooperative efforts between American specialist Julie White and Chervonohrad's chief surgeon, Dr. Ihor Grondzal. During this mission, Dr. White initiated the hospital's thyroid surgery program. Significantly, all technology and instruments donated to Chervonohrad to date have been very professionally maintained by a team of Chervonohrad biomedical engineers and technicians.

"Project Baby Face," the plastic and reconstructive project begun four years ago by Zoryana Kovbasniuk, RN, was a major focus of EMAU's medical mission. Specialists Dr. Snyder, Dr. Huntsman and Dr. Ostap Mohylak, a Ukrainian surgeon who headed the plastics team, performed surgeries for cleft palate repair, breast implantation after mastectomy for a tumor in a 15-year-old, facial scars from trauma, ear and nose creation and reconstruction, expander placement as preparation for future surgery, as well as other procedures.

Dr. Pradham, a chief resident in ENT (ear, nose, throat) and plastic surgery received much experience in difficult ENT/reconstructive procedures while working alongside both Ukrainian and American specialists. The Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital receives children from all of Ukraine for complicated plastic procedures not available or perfected elsewhere in Ukraine.

The newest collaborative project between EMAU and the Lviv Specialized Children's Hospital and Lviv Regional Pediatric Burn Center was launched with great success in surgery using tissue expanders donated by the McGhan Corp. These expanders cost no less than $500 each. The children at the burn center often are so severely burned that very little tissue remains for grafting; expanders then become the only way to increase the area of usable skin. These children face numerous painful surgeries and grueling rehabilitation.

Dedication in the face of severe shortages is evident in the Ukrainian team headed by Dr. Vasyl Savchyn. Mr. Dashawetz, who reviewed the Burn Center's most dire needs in September of 2000, brought one multimonitor and one pulse oximeter for the center. Prior to this there were no heart or oxygen saturation monitors in the whole center, including its operating room. This simple addition increases greatly the recovery rate of severely burned patients.

Future aid will come to the center from EMAU's medical shipment scheduled for late summer, which will include additional monitors, an electrocautery machine, surgical instruments and sutures.

In orthopedics, Dr. Furey engaged in several back and shoulder surgeries, both at the Vynnyky Hospital for Invalids and Repressed and at the Lviv Regional Specialized Children's Hospital, working with the chief of orthopedics for the Lviv region, Dr. Teofil Pidlesetsky, and the chief of pediatric orthopedics, Dr. Oles Schurak. The future goal is to establish a back/spine surgery center in Vynnyky, now the spinal cord center for the Lviv Oblast, and a tissue-sparing bone tumor removal center at the Lviv Regional Specialized Pediatric Hospital.

EMAU/UAYA is grateful to its volunteers - many of them first time visitors to Ukraine - who worked under less than ideal conditions, but were spurred on by their Ukrainian counterparts' dedication and enthusiasm. All have promised to return. This is a great sacrifice as these specialists paid their own way to Ukraine and gave of their free time to Ukrainian patients in need.

Anesthesiology specialists Ms. Brennan and Mr. Dashawetz provided anesthesia for many cases with their Ukrainian counterparts. Both agreed on the skill of Ukrainian anesthesia providers in the face of antiquated anesthesia machines, a lack of adequate monitoring and shortages of banked blood. Ms. Walsh, operating room nurse specialist, focused on teaching Ukrainian OR nurses techniques and use of specialized instruments, especially in plastic reconstructive surgery with burn patients and cleft palate repair.

In September, EMAU/UAYA will be part of "The Visionaries," a nationally televised program about humanitarian work around the world. EMAU was chosen from more than 5,000 groups who applied for the opportunity. This summer, during preparation for on-site filming in Ukraine, a more detailed account of the program will be announced.

For further information on this and other medical missions, readers may contact: EMAU, 45 Salman St., West Roxbury, MA 02132; telephone, (781) 329-4187; fax, (781) 329-4824; e-mail, [email protected].

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