Without a Single Puncture

St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital in Lviv annually admits around 28,000 children for inpatient treatment and provides over 90,000 consultations and examinations. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, it has become a referral center for more than 60,000 internally displaced children from all regions of Ukraine. The hospital is part of the UNBROKEN Kids ecosystem and operates within the First Medical Association of Lviv*.

One of the largest Neurosurgery and Epilepsy Surgery Centers in Ukraine functions here, as well as the only Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Center in Western Ukraine, where infants with the most complex congenital heart defects are operated on, and the largest Pediatric Burn Center in the western part of the country.

The full-scale war has significantly affected the health of pregnant women and the fate of their children. Chronic stress, forced displacement, disruptions in nutrition and prenatal medical care are directly linked to the rising rate of preterm births. Women evacuated from the east and south of the country often arrived in Lviv already in critical condition: without medical documentation, without prior examinations, after months spent in basements and under shelling.

Premature babies are born into bodies that are not yet ready for the outside world. Their organs have not completed development, their nervous system requires special protection, and their brain is vulnerable to any deviations in the chemical balance of the blood. For such a child, even physiological jaundice, which resolves on its own in a full-term baby, can become a threat. That is why these children require the closest monitoring from the very first hours of life.

To check a newborn’s bilirubin level, doctors are forced to draw blood. With a needle. From a finger or a heel. From a baby who may weigh 600 grams.

For such a tiny child, every puncture like this is real pain and stress. Not an exaggeration, not a metaphor. Physical pain in a fragile body that has just entered the world in wartime conditions, premature, with an immature nervous system. And if bilirubin levels need to be monitored several times a day, these punctures accumulate. In premature infants, repeated blood sampling also increases the risk of anemia, as their total blood volume is minimal.

While the doctor waits for laboratory results from one to three hours, the child’s condition may change. A delayed start of phototherapy in severe cases threatens brain damage, and in the worst scenarios, exchange blood transfusion becomes necessary.

In most developed countries, transcutaneous bilirubinometers have been used for decades. The device is placed on the baby’s skin and the result is obtained within seconds. No puncture, no pain, no waiting. Even the mother standing nearby does not notice that anything has happened.

Medical communities in Europe and the United States have long established non-invasive monitoring as the standard precisely because excessive trauma to newborns, including emotional trauma, has consequences. Early experiences of pain affect the development of a child’s nervous system. Mothers who watch their infant being punctured several times a day experience additional psychological trauma in already inhumane conditions.

In Ukraine, this technology officially exists, but in most neonatal departments it is simply unavailable. Not due to a lack of knowledge or willingness, but because of cost. One such device costs over 215,000 hryvnias, and for most hospitals in wartime this is an unaffordable amount.

St. Nicholas Hospital requires a BiliCare™ transcutaneous bilirubinometer. With 1,700 to 2,300 newborns per year, approximately 1,500 children with jaundice annually will be able to receive monitoring without a single puncture. Up to 60–70% of control measurements will be conducted without laboratory involvement. From 250 to 300 babies requiring phototherapy will receive timely and accurate treatment. According to doctors’ estimates, 10 to 20 severe cases of hyperbilirubinemia per year can be prevented precisely thanks to early diagnosis.

Make your contribution to pain-free monitoring for the youngest patients.

Support the project and give them a safe start in life!

*Full name of the hospital: Municipal Non-Profit Enterprise "First Medical Association of Lviv".