"Shrapnel hit my eye, shattered my skull bones and damaged my brain": how one Ukrainian soldier was saved
A team of Canadian and American doctors from Face the Future Foundation, working with Ukrainian doctors, have been preparing Dmytro, a 42-year-old veteran of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to be fitted with a prosthetic eye.
Dmytro joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the autumn of 2022, swapping his career as an architect for reconnaissance. He defended Donetsk Oblast for two years before being wounded.
A shell from a tank exploded a few metres away from Dmytro and a fragment of the shell hit him in the face, the Patients of Ukraine charity said.
"Driven by adrenaline, Dmytro walked a kilometre to the evacuation centre, and then everything went dark. The soldier had to undergo brain surgery and spent 18 days in a coma, but he fought his way back to life," Patients of Ukraine said.
Once the defender's health was no longer in danger, a team from the international mission Face the Future Ukraine took over the aesthetic treatment of the "traces of war" on his face and prepared Dmytro for an ocular prosthesis.
In place of the shattered bones of Dmytro’s eye orbit, doctors installed a Materialise, a personalised 3D implant, which replaced the lost part of his face.
Dmytro also underwent surgery on his nose to restore nasal breathing and fill in the cavity left after brain surgery, which the veteran had been disguising by wearing caps.
"Because the shrapnel had shattered his eye orbit, it was impossible to put in a cosmetic prosthetic eye; it would have kept falling in. Also, the eyelid could not have been opened sufficiently because the eye incision was too small," said Natalia Komashko, one of the mission coordinators.
"The reconstructive surgery performed on Dmytro has prepared him for future prosthetics, and soon he will be able to use an ocular prosthesis."
The charity notes that Dmytro made a rapid recovery after the operation and has now returned home, where his 10-year-old son was waiting for him.
Face the Future Foundation has carried out four missions to Ukraine. During the last one, they operated on 34 Ukrainians.
Earlier, Ukrainska Pravda reported on how an international team of surgeons from Canada, the US and Ukraine reconstructed the face of a Ukrainian soldier who was seriously wounded while fighting in Donetsk Oblast.
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