The 13th Reconstruction Mission reconstructive initiative, involving American and Ukrainian specialists, has been completed at the Children’s Medicine Centre of Okhmatdyt Hospital in Lviv. During a week of work, the team carried out 13 complex operations and provided 45 consultations to children from different regions of Ukraine.
Alongside leading specialists from the USA — craniofacial surgeon John Sands and head and neck plastic surgeon John Frodel — worked the Centre’s multidisciplinary team: maxillofacial surgeons, anaesthetists and theatre nurses. The doctors helped children regain the ability to breathe and eat normally, to smile, and to live without pain. Patients came, among others, from Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Volyn and other regions.
As part of the mission, specialists consulted 45 children, some of them remotely, and operated on 13 patients with the most complex congenital and acquired facial defects, as well as the consequences of severe injuries. According to maxillofacial surgeon Khrystyna Pohranychna, three of these plastic and reconstructive procedures were of extremely high complexity — they involved children with the rare Goldenhar and Pierre Robin syndromes, who had severe deformities of the facial skeleton and absence of certain joints or bones.
In one case, the team used preliminary computer 3D modelling to manufacture custom titanium plates. During the operation, the doctors used the child’s own rib as a graft to form the lower jaw, performed an osteotomy and contour plastic surgery using the patient’s own soft tissues in order to restore anatomical symmetry and function.
In addition, the surgeons carried out a series of functional and static rhino-septoplasties in children with cleft lip and palate, whose anatomy and breathing were significantly impaired. Separately, a total reconstruction of the facial skeleton was performed on a child after a severe road traffic accident.
This is already the 13th Reconstruction Mission in Lviv. Since the launch of the programme in 2023, the Centre has provided more than 1,195 consultations, performed 277 operations and fitted over 30 custom implants. Over this time, the collaboration model has also changed: American specialists now work together with their Ukrainian colleagues at every stage — from consultations and 3D planning to joint operations.
The long-term cooperation model, established in Lviv in 2023, is now being prepared for expansion to other regions of Ukraine. The organisers plan to increase the scale of reconstructive missions by roughly threefold and gradually expand their geography from two to six regions of the country. Detailed examination and treatment plans have already been drawn up for all new patients, and the most complex cases have been included in the programme of the next mission, scheduled for spring 2027.
The initiator and organiser of Reconstruction Mission is the Christian Medical Association of Ukraine, in partnership with LEAP Global Missions, AROMS and Ed’s Friends (Edward Ma). The medical team acknowledges the contribution of all partners and the Centre’s staff to their shared daily work to improve children’s quality of life.