Surgeon shares his memories from Artsakh war: The hardest thing is to choose who will live

November 30, 2020  19:26

Maxillofacial surgeon Gevorg Shahsuvaryan was heading to Artsakh earlier in the morning of September 27, barely hearing that the war had begun.

"I drove very quickly, did not stop anywhere along the way, so I was already at the Stepanakert hospital by 4 pm," he said.

He did not leave the operating room until 12 am: during this time, he and his colleagues received and operated on over 100 wounded.

"We slept at best 2 hours a day"

The wounded were mainly brought to the Stepanakert hospital and had already been provided with all possible help.

However, the flow of the wounded was very large; they were operated on and bandaged: some of them were returning to the front, and others with heavy injuries were sent to hospitals in Armenia, where they would be provided with further treatment.

Besides, it was impossible for many patients to remain in the hospital because it is not known when the new wounded will arrive and how many of them there will be.

According to the specialist, there were almost no patients with bullet wounds, especially in the early days of the war.

There were mostly shrapnel wounds, of which the most difficult were those inflicted by cluster munitions.

Often, several surgeries were performed in a room at once, and specialists switched from one patient to another.

Sometimes, when it was not possible to switch, the operating doctors consulted the advice of their colleagues to understand how to act correctly, sometimes they had to work on their own, even if, for example, he was a maxillofacial surgeon who had to perform surgery on the brain or leg.

“Emotions disappeared on the very first day”

The endless stream of wounded, lack of sleep, constant stress - all this was a serious test for civilian doctors, accustomed to working in completely different conditions. Some experienced extreme stress, which was very difficult to cope with.

“Emotions disappeared on the first day. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to endure all this and work at such a pace, in such conditions,” Dr. Shahsuvaryan told NEWS.am Medicine.

According to him, thanks to his experience, he "was able to overcome many difficulties during this war. But not everyone succeeds."

“If it weren't for the nurses, we would most likely have remained hungry.” According to the surgeon, there was no shortage of tools, medicines, or equipment at the hospital doctors. In the early days, there was a little lack of highly specialized tools, but then colleagues and friends began to send in everything they needed. Somehow the X-ray machine went out of order, but it was quickly replaced with a new one, and the work did not stop.

The nurses monitored the hygiene in the operating rooms: it was they who, noticing that the surgeons had to switch between patients, changed their gloves.

"The nurses worked very well and provided us with incredible support," he said.

"The hardest part is choosing who will live."

"The realization that you have to choose who to operate first and who is most likely to live is very difficult. When we studied, the teachers said that during the war, our patient was not a soldier, but a border. And we must, first of all, choose those wounded who can quickly return to duty," he said. "This is the difference between the thinking of a civilian and a military doctor."

"A civilian doctor would first help a difficult one, a military doctor first has to help someone who has more chances to return to duty. If you have 100 wounded in front of you and you can save 10 of them, you must first endure those who have the highest chances of surviving...This is what they say in books," he noted adding that it is not easy at all.

The mortality rate among the wounded who reached the central hospital was rather low. According to the surgeon, he can remember only about 3 such cases.

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