Doctors carry out three complex facial reconstruction surgeries on soldiers in one day
American and Ukrainian medics carried out three extremely complex facial reconstruction surgeries in a single day on soldiers at Nezlamni (Unbroken), the Ukrainian national rehabilitation centre.
Source: First Medical Union of Lviv
Details: Several teams of medics worked in each operating theatre. While one group of surgeons prepared the wound site for surgery, the other harvested the material from the other part of the body from which bones and tissue would be transplanted to the injured area.
At least 10 specialists worked with each patient, including surgeons, an anesthesiologist, nurses and assistants. Each surgery lasted between 10 and 15 hours.
"Personally, it’s hard for me to see so many young people with incredibly serious injuries that they will have to deal with their whole lives. Maybe that’s what affects me the most. That’s why our main goal is to repair these injuries and help them," says Grigoriy Mashkevich, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon from New York.
Hnat Herych, who is head of surgery at Unbroken and head of the surgical department at St Panteleimon’s Hospital of the First Territorial Medical Union, told Ukrinform he had worked on facial reconstruction for a patient with a blast injury.
A significant amount of the patient’s soft tissue and facial bones had been torn off.
A highly complex method is used for this kind of reconstruction, in which a small piece of the tibia, including a vessel, skin and part of the muscle, is specially prepared and inserted in the areas where bones are absent on the face. The vessels are sewn together in order to obtain a blood supply from the neck.
"This is a highly complex microsurgical transplantation, since these vessels are very thin, almost like a hair. We did this operation on three soldiers who had been injured in the war," Herych explained.
In total, 30 Ukrainians who have suffered head, neck and upper limb injuries will be operated on in one week. Initially 42 operations were planned, but the number has been reduced as the surgery is so lengthy. The American surgeons are due to operate on other patients in the spring of 2024.
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