Christmas season ahead, so the Biotech project’s doctors are trying to empty the clinic’s wards, for each fighter to be able to spend holidays at home. Lately, Victor, a young guy who was saved from amputation by volunteers, left for home as well. His treatment is approaching its finale: lately the guy’s got the Ilizarov apparatus removed from his leg – due to application of this device the limb has been stretched up to its proper length. Now the implanted bone which was grown up out of the soldier’s own stem cells, got noticeably stronger.
During the last surgery the guy got a metal structure and a plate fixing his tibia, removed. So far, his hip stays fixed with a koxite bandage (that is with gypsum one that keeps the hip totally immobilized). Victor will have to wear this cumbersome structure for about six weeks until the bone gains solidity, but the next stage is to become the straightway to rehabilitation and active motion!
Victor suffered a lot during the war. Being a volunteer, the guy served with the 11th “Kyivska Rus” Battalion. He got severely wounded in fighting for Donetsk airport in May, 2015. Together with his comrades Victor was defending Butivka shaft which was fiercely shelled by the enemy. A rocket propelled grenade hit Victor; a projectile destroyed his arm, and the explosion and shell fragments severely cut his leg.
Since the beginning of Victor’s treatment the doctors managed to heal massive osteomyelitis destroying the bones, to fuse up exceptionally intricate fractures which refused to get healed for a long time, and to recompense the major defect of the bone that made about 12 cm of a lacking bone. Due to the massive infection and traumatic injury medics failed to restore the natural length of the leg within the first stage of treatment. So when they got the complicated fractures fused up thanks to application of cell technologies, the surgeons mounted the Ilizarov apparatus to stretch up one of the bones for extra 3 cm using traditional medical methods. As a result, the leg re-gained its normal length and the guy got all the chances to walk without any support!
Dear friends, first of all, this case has become our conjoint victory. Almost 818 thousand hryvnias is a huge sum for an ordinary Ukrainian, and naturally Victor would not have had the chance to pay for his treatment on his own when the state had abandoned its wounded soldier. So everything we managed to achieve within the Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded project, became possible thanks to charitable donations made by sympathetic people who trusted the Project and did not leave the wounded soldier alone in his trouble. Currently we are engaged in treatment of five fighters minimum, and the funds for this purpose has not been raised yet. So your support would be extremely welcome and appropriate!
