PARMA, Ohio — Four University Hospitals doctors are back in Northeast Ohio after traveling to Ukraine to provide vital surgeries to patients and help train Ukrainian doctors in their field of reconstructive urology.
"The extent of the trauma was actually something I'd never seen before," Dr. Shubhum Gupta, who is also the chief of reconstructive urology at UH, said. "Not just in the genitourinary system, but all of the tissue surrounding it. All of these traumas were not happening in isolation; they were people who had devastated pelvises and bones and soft tissues, patients who had devastated GI tracts, colon, rectum, and so forth. So, all of that really added to the complexity of the individual patient traumas that we saw."
"Once we got there, I don't think anything prepares you quite for what we saw and what we encountered — just the severity of the injuries that we saw," Dr. Andrew Drozd, whose grandparents are from Ukraine, concurred. "It wasn't just the damage to the urethra, but all of the other tissues around it were severely destroyed from these mine injuries and these large caliber gunshot wounds, which made scar tissue very prevalent and made the cases very, very difficult.”"
Gupta says the trip was taxing physically and emotionally, as the doctors witnessed firsthand the extent of the trauma suffered by patients. The doctors told 3News they operated for five straight days — often for 10-12 hours a day — helping about 20 patients.
"There's probably a cascade of emotions that one can use to try and describe our experience there, and honestly, myself and the other surgeons are still processing a lot of the things that we saw," Gupta added. "But our overall experience was phenomenal."
Gupta and Drozd both mentioned the support and help they received from their Ukrainian colleagues. The UH doctors, in turn, showed them different techniques in reconstructive urology while there. Some of the surgeries were also filmed, so that the Ukrainian medical professionals can look back and study what was being done.
"We should try to have a codified system such that either we can go there regularly or those surgeons can come here and train here for a little bit of time," Gupta said. "What we've started is a little spark, and we want to make sure it continues to kind of flourish."
"To go and to be immersed and to see how passionate and patriotic all of the people are, even the civilians in the cities, it's something that's hard to put into words, but definitely makes me very proud to be Ukrainian," Drozd declared.
Drozd and Gupta were also grateful for the Ukrainian nurses, who prepared home-cooked meals for their team. Drozd says aid the dishes included childhood favorites like pierogis and borscht.
While the days were long and the doctors didn't have all the resources they typically would in their operating rooms at UH, they both said they would be willing to go back to help if the opportunity arose, grateful for their Ukrainian counterparts, the work they were able to do, and the gratitude shown by the patients.
"All the patients were incredibly grateful," Drozd said. "A few of them were so grateful that after their surgeries, when we were rounding on them on our last day, they actually gave their military emblems from their uniforms as thank you gifts to one of our surgeons, Dr. Mishra, which is just very impactful. Something that means so much to them, to be able to impart as a gift to somebody who helped the, it was just very inspiring to see and be a part of."
"It was sobering, it was humbling, and it was gratifying, especially to see the trust that patients had placed in us," Gupta stated. "To let someone come from thousands of miles away and operate on oneself, it’s a big commitment of trust."
The trip was spearheaded by Dr. Laura Bukavina, a urologic oncologist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center who herself was born in Ukraine.