30 operations, one of which is a skin transplant from the back to the head. Surgeons of the NEZLAMNI Rehabilitation Center, together with their Canadian colleagues, rescued a Kherson man who was injured during a rocket attack. The extremely difficult operation was performed in Poland.
Two rockets flew into the house of 55-year-old Mykhailo in the Kherson region. The wife died, the husband was pulled out from under the rubble by his son.
A torn cheek, a broken arm and bruises. Among the numerous injuries are severe head burns. There was no skin left on the skull.
Mykhailo spent three weeks on the verge of life and death in the intensive care unit of Kryvyi Rih. He was then evacuated to the National Rehabilitation Center NEZLAMNI of the First Medical Association of Lviv.
The man underwent almost three dozen operations. Doctors managed to stabilize Mykhailo’s condition. However, the biggest problem remained – a wound on the head. It had to be closed urgently with muscle tissue, otherwise the brain could be affected by a deadly infection at any moment.
The way out of the situation is a complex reconstructive operation: tissue transplantation from the back to the head. Canadians volunteered to help Lviv residents, but it turned out that they are not ready to come to Ukraine, they are ready to go to Poland. So the Ukrainian doctors and the patient went there, namely to the clinic in the Polish town of Chelyadz (400 km from Lviv).
The operation lasted 12 hours. The Ukrainian-Canadian team worked as one mechanism. The surgeons first separated a piece of the broadest back muscle, and then transplanted it onto the exposed skull. Vessels, the size of a human hair, were stitched together under a microscope.
The intervention was successful. Within a week, Mykhailo returned to the NEZLAMNI Center for rehabilitation. Ahead, the man has several more cosmetic operations on his face.