Russian doctors have stayed behind in a burning, tsarist-era hospital in the country's Far East to complete open-heart surgery after a fire broke out on the roof shortly after the operation began.
Doctors continued to conduct the complicated heart by-pass surgery at the Amur State Medical Academy's cardiology centre in Blagoveshchensk despite the fire and the loss of electrical power.
Firefighters took more than two hours to put out the blaze.
To air the operating rooms and protect everyone inside from smoke, firefighters used electric ventilators.
A group of eight doctors and nurses completed the operation in two hours before evacuating the site, the emergencies ministry said.
"There's nothing else we could do. We had to save the person," surgeon Valentin Filatov was quoted as saying by REN TV.
The ministry said 128 people were immediately evacuated from the hospital as the fire broke out on the roof.
"The clinic was built more than a century ago, in 1907, and the fire spread like lightning through the wooden ceilings of the roof," the ministry said.
No one was reported hurt. The heart surgery was completed successfully and the patient was transferred to another regional hospital for further treatment.
"A bow to the medics and firefighters," said Vasiliy Orlov, the local regional governor.
The cause of the fire is yet to be determined.
Blagoveshchensk lies in the East of Russia near the country's border with China.
ABC/wires
