Surgeons in Kyrgyzstan resorted to using torches and mobile phone lights to see while carrying out open heart surgery after a blackout.

A video published on Youtube earlier this month claims to show Dr Kaldarbek Abdramanov, director of Kyrgyzstan’s Southern Regional Scientific Center of Cardiovascular Surgery, performing an operation while assistants hold up lights.

The doctor put the video on his Facebook page, describing the “extreme conditions” in which he and his colleagues had to operate on the stopped heart, reported news site Daily Dot.

In a comment alongside the video, Dr Abdramanov said it is “hard to say that it’s a crime or heroism”.

He wrote: “[Do you] continue to operate, putting undue risk to the life of the patient on the operating table… [or] stop the operation, exposing the risk of premature death to hundreds of patients waiting for their turn?”

The mountainous nation is heavily dependent on hydropower, according to a 2009 report by the Centre for European Policy Studies, with a water shortage in 2008 prompting an electricity shortage.

Kyrgyzstan seems to have struggled with an energy crisis ever since, recently selling state gas company to Russia’s Gazprom.

WARNING: The video below features medical surgery.