Surgeons carry on with heart operation as fire rages
TEN Russian medics were hailed as heroes after they continued with open heart surgery as fire swept through the hospital where they were working.
The two-storey building – in the city of Blagoveshchensk, 5600km east of Moscow and on the border with China – was evacuated as it began to fill with smoke yesterday.
More than 120 people including 67 patients reached safety but the surgical team was three hours into a five-hour heart operation on a male patient.
They pressed on even as flames leapt from the wooden roof of the cardiology centre. ‘‘There was no choice, we had to save this person and we did everything,’’ Valentin Filatov, the head of the heart unit, said in a television interview.
The team was carrying out a coronary artery bypass graft when the fire, apparently caused by an electrical fault, took hold.
Power was lost and the operating theatre was switched on to
an emergency generator to allow the surgery to continue, with the patient attached to a heart-lung machine.
Firefighters doused the area with water and used fans to keep smoke at bay as the surgeons finished the operation.
They prepared breathing apparatus in case the medics needed it.
As soon as the patient could be moved, they carried him down the hospital steps on a stretcher as firefighters climbed ladders to continue tackling the blaze.
‘‘When the fire started, the patient was already on the operating table and the chest was open, so it was not possible to stop the operation,’’ Alexander Korotkikh, the lead surgeon, told reporters.
Asked if his hands were shaking, Filatov replied: ‘‘No, courage and composure, as the saying goes. You have to operate – that’s it, no other questions. It was the most complicated kind of operation.’’
He then admitted: ‘‘It was frightening, of course. We’re people, after all.’’
The patient was taken to another hospital by ambulance. Later yesterday he was said to be in a stable condition.
Film of the fire showed smoke rising hundreds of metres over the 115-year-old building. Some locals questioned how such a blaze could be possible in a healthcare building and why better fire prevention measures were not in place.
Mikhail Murashko, Russia’s health minister, thanked the team of doctors for their ‘‘precise and co-ordinated’’ work.
Vasily Orlov, the governor of the Amur region, said that doctors and firefighters involved in the rescue would receive awards for their heroism. He said that the building would be restored and that he had ordered checks on other medical institutions.