Photos: Hero doctors perform open-heart surgery as hospital is on fire

Firefighters battle the flames on the roof.

Hero surgeons and nurses “risked their lives” inside a burning hospital to complete a “complex’ heart bypass operation.

Medics had just cut open the male patient’s chest when an inferno engulfed a 114-year-old hospital in Russian city Blagoveschensk.

Eight brave medics stayed behind to carry out the crucial surgery as huge flames ripped through the hospital roof.

Chief surgeon Valentin Filatov, 29, refused to evacuate his operating theatre despite flames and thick black smoke raging through the building.

Medics risked their lives to save a patient as fire ripped through a hospital.

“We were scared, of course. We are human,” he said.

“We couldn’t leave, we had to save the patient…

“We continued the surgery, what else do you do?”

Doctors and nurses performed the complex open-heart surgery as fire ripped through the building.

He explained: “It was a coronary artery bypass graft, one of the most complex cardiac surgeries.”

Mayor Oleg Imameev praised the “heroism” of the surgical team for risking their lives and remaining at their post in the operating theatre at the Cardiological Centre of Amur State Medical Academy.

But Dr Filatov said: “There was no decision-making about it.

Firefighters put out the blaze.

The operation just had to continue. We completed it in full.”

A total of 67 patients and dozens of staff were evacuated from the burning hospital by firefighters.

A video shows the moment firefighters and medics brought out the heart surgery patient after his heart bypass was completed amid the smoke from the blaze.

The patient was then rushed to a nearby hospital.