At St Luke’s Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv, doctors saved the life and limb of a 24-year-old citizen of Moldova who, due to severe thrombosis of her left leg, could have lost it and even died had she sought help an hour later.
The young woman moved from Chișinău to Lviv last year, where she works for an IT company. At first, she felt pain in her left leg, which went away on its own by the evening. The next day, her condition deteriorated sharply: the pain returned, her leg quickly became swollen, turned blue and felt cold to the touch. The patient immediately went to St Luke’s Hospital.
Examination revealed phlebothrombosis and thrombophlebitis of the left lower limb — a total blockage of the deep and superficial veins, which is rare in people of this age. The clots completely blocked the venous outflow from the leg and extended to the iliac veins in the pelvic area. This caused acute compartment syndrome: the muscles became severely swollen, the fascia compressed them, tissue pressure rose critically and the blood vessels began to be constricted. By the time she was admitted to hospital, there was already a risk that her leg would have to be amputated at hip level, as well as a risk of kidney failure, sepsis and death.
Surgeons immediately began operating. They performed decompressive fasciotomy — cutting the sheaths around the muscles to reduce pressure and restore blood flow. According to the doctors, if she had come in later, the leg would have had to be amputated. At the same time, they started anticoagulant therapy to dissolve the clots, and over the next two weeks anaesthetists stabilised the patient’s condition. Later, surgeons performed free split-thickness skin grafting and reconstruction of the defects using rotational flaps.
During treatment, the doctors established the cause of the severe thrombosis: the woman was found to have hereditary thrombophilia — a genetic predisposition to disorders of the blood clotting system and the formation of clots. The patient is now feeling well, is under specialist supervision and continues with outpatient follow-up.
«I never in my life thought I would end up in a situation like this. If I had gone to hospital on the first day when my leg started hurting, this would not have happened. All I can say is: if something hurts, you need to go to hospital, because we ourselves cannot guess what is going on in our bodies.»
The First Medical Association of Lviv notes that it provides a full range of modern medical care — from diagnosis and treatment to complex surgical interventions, rehabilitation and prosthetics, including for patients in an extremely serious condition.