Ihor‘s leg has been perfectly restoring following the major surgery, so treatment within the «Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded» project brings its results. Ihor has started to walk quite confidently with crutches; he cautiously tries to step on his injured leg – his newly grown bone has to get used to workload. The bone block grown of the guy’s own cells that was implanted in proper area, is fine. Still, the new structure has to gain strength yet: due to the vastness of the defect the process of healing will take certain time. But taking into consideration good dynamics it shows, the hip bone is going to turn into a monolith quite soon.
Ihor got wounded in August of 2014 near Shakhtarsk, when the guy’s unit got ambushed by enemy. Only six soldiers out of twenty-four stayed alive. Severely wounded and bleeding Ihor had to crawl through the fields in the night time. Before dawn he got to the road. Local people found him and took to the nearest Ukrainian check-point, from which he was promptly evacuated to the hospital. The examination showed that his body was heavily injured with shotgun wounds, among which the hip injury was probably the severest one. Doctors stabilized the guy’s overall condition and tried to fix the fracture using traditional methods, still the treatment proved unsuccessful: the complicated fracture just refused to fuse up.
This was the chaos we had to start with
A year ago nobody knew what Ihor’s perspective would be. The metal structures that kept the injured leg together, got broken. The bone continued to get destroyed which eventually resulted in total defect of about 5 cm length. Doctors of conventional medicine were unable to recompense it and make such a complex fracture fuse up, so they just released the guy from the hospital and sent him home with no further instructions or recommendations, just “as is”. The question of amputation was rather pressing, but suddenly the Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded project came in handy.
This picture was taken three months after the major surgery, in August 2017. The bone block is doing well betwixt the remains of the hip
Ihor has already spent almost a year in the Project. For this period of time bioengineers grew up the necessary fragment and surgeons cleared the damaged area and got it prepared for transplantation and eventually fixed the proper fragment amidst the remainders of the smashed bone. The injured zone was filled with biological gel saturated with specific cells intended to enhance the process of fusion as can be seen in the x-ray picture below
This photo was taken not long ago: the bone block got firmly fused amid the remains of the bone and is actively covering with fresh bone tissue. With time all this is going to finally fuse up and strengthen into a monolith bone
In a short period of time the doctors are going to perform another surgery, but not on the bone this time: it will be a reconstructive operation in the course of which the surgeons will restore the torn ligaments of the knee. This will speed the healing up and allow to carry out wider range of rehabilitative exercises which will enable Ihor to walk freely and without pain.
We have already paid for the entire course of Ihor’s treatment, total cost of which made about half a million hryvnias. This amount is likely to grow a bit due to necessity of additional surgeries: the guy’s knee joints are to be restored as well. So we are urging you to help us a bit: as usual, treatment within the «Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded» project that our People’s Project volunteer center carries out, is possible only at the expense of donations. Ihor has already entered his personal victorious path, so to leave him alone would mean unravelling all achievements and messing up most part of the funds donated for his treatment. A few more hryvnias contributed by each of us, will increase the guy’s chances for full recovery and return to normal life.
