A team of Ukrainian and American doctors successfully operated on a 14-year-old girl with an arteriovenous malformation.
A family from the Ternopil region turned to doctors due to changes in the shape of the girl’s face and lips. “The disease started showing symptoms 2 years ago. Swelling appeared, and we consulted our family doctor. We were told it was an allergy, which we treated for some time. When it was cold outside, this ‘swelling’ turned blue. Overall, it kept increasing. It started changing the shape of her lips and face. She’s a girl. She started feeling self-conscious. When we saw that nothing was helping, we started seriously searching for the cause, did tests, examinations. In Ternopil, we were told that they don’t do such things,” – shares Anastasia’s mother, Yulia.
Doctors diagnosed arteriovenous malformation and performed surgery to remove the malformation. The surgery was successful, but later a new abnormal communication was discovered that required sclerotherapy. “The intervention was successful, we achieved a good aesthetic effect and during screening – sonography showed a good result. But as we already know, dealing with malformations is never simple, as the child grows, vessels grow, and the malformation likewise, and there is dominance of non-‘classical’ neoangiogenesis – remodeling of blood flow, not just ‘formation of new vessels’,” explains pediatric vascular surgeon Yulia Khomin.
American surgeons David Low and James Suen assisted in the operations. “The impressions are wonderful. Overall, we are very pleased that we managed to find the necessary specialists. We actually found information that such interventions are performed at the Center on social media and contacted them immediately. We were examined, everything was explained, and within a few months, there was already an operation. We are very happy to have timely found our specialists,” adds the girl’s mother.