Ryabushenko Dariia

Daryna is only 1.6 years old, and she has a congenital heart defect – atresia of the pulmonary artery with a ventricular septal defect. In simple terms, the child is missing the vessel that carries blood from the heart to the lungs. Without help in the first hours of life, such babies, unfortunately, die in 100% of cases. Thanks to modern diagnostic methods, doctors often know about this problem before the child is born and can save the infant’s life immediately after birth. To bring the child back to a normal life and prevent her death, staged surgical treatment is performed in the first years of life – two, three, four operations.

Thanks to previous surgeries, the little girl is now alive; blood reaches her lungs through a tiny connection between the aorta and the branches of the pulmonary artery, essentially the only source of life for the little one. As the child grows, this connection becomes insufficient, oxygen saturation in the blood begins to drop, she starts to suffocate, and unfortunately this can lead to the worst.

Our patient now needs the final stage of defect correction – restoring the outflow from the heart to the pulmonary artery and closing the ventricular septal defect. Since the child lacks her own artery, it must be replaced with an expensive biological implant – a Contegra conduit. After this operation, her little heart will function like that of healthy children.

Now time is running out, and it is urgently necessary to raise money to purchase an implant. The operation at the Amosov Institute is performed free of charge, but without a conduit it cannot be carried out. A typical Ukrainian family from a village has no money to save their daughter’s life, and they are reaching out for help to all caring people.