Tenolysis! This is the gift that Volodymyr, a participant of the Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded project, has got for the New Year holidays. Surely, you have already learnt this term, still let us explain for our new coming readers: tenolysis means a reconstructive surgery in the course of which doctors are literally groping each centimeter of a tendon exempting it from scars and conglutination with adjusting connective tissues as well as from other stuff impeding normal functioning of the given tendon. This was exactly the surgery Volodymyr has underwent: right now the doctors are restoring joining of his Achilles tendon to the rest of foot structures.
Volodymyr’s foot is now being wrapped into this nice sack resembling the Saint Nickolas’s one
Volodymyr got into the Project lacking his whole heal bone. Yes, this is not an exaggeration: the enemy shell fragment had severely injured his foot and entirely torn this important bone off. The doctors of the Project took certain amount of Volodymyr’s own cell material, separated the necessary stem cells cultures from it and cultivated them in their labs up to the sufficient volume.
This is how the foot looked at the very beginning
Besides, the surgeons got the prospective transferal area ready for further transplantation, and filled up the soft tissue defect with pieces of skin and subdermal tissues. We are not sure where exactly they took these, still for today Volodymyr remains the Project’s only patient featuring a hairy heel. Soon the doctors literally grown up a new heel bone for Volodymyr, adjusted it with orthopedic screws and generously plastered it with stem cells to enhance integration and accelerate healing.
Just look how different these x-rays are
For today, the doctors managed to restore the heel bone in full, and now it is about what should be done next. As previously the bone had been adjusted to the Achilles tendon, which in its turn was joined to the muscles of ankle allowing the body to move the leg. Hence, the arthrodesis seemed the most probable option: that meant the doctors would have stiffly fixed the foot to the tibia which would have allowed Volodymyr to limp on his immovable leg somehow.
Still, luckily for the man, the doctors decided not to stop at the achieved point. Quite unexpectedly, they discovered a fragment of the bone on the remains of the tendon. It had got broken a while ago, and miraculously remained intact. So now Volodymyr Oksymets’s team has entered into the unbelievable venture: they are stretching the tendon which got shortened and dried a bit due to absence of natural load, up to its physiological length. And soon, in a few weeks – as now the tendon is lacking another seven millimeters in length – they are going to adjust that remaining small fragment of the bone to the new heel bone. Of course, all this needs more reconstructive surgeries: the tendon have grown into the adjoining tissues, so it is to be extricated from these. Following certain rehabilitation and restoration, all this will enable Volodymyr to move his foot again – just in the same way he used to before he got injured.
The surgeons are cutting his leg again and again almost every month. Despite this, he is just laughing happily
And finally. A traumatic heel bone amputation caused by severe injury? In a state hospital, this diagnosis implies a verdict for inevitable amputation, as conventional medicine just lacks methods for restoration of such defects. Even German medics who closely examined Volodymyr’s case, gave up and recommended him application of orthopedic footwear as maximum. But exceptionally thanks to the conjoint volunteering initiative launched by People’s Project volunteer center together with ilaya clinic, the heavily wounded fighters have the chance to get restored to maximally possible level. It has been the fourth consecutive year of the war and the fourth year of treatment for wounded in a row, still the state proceeds with keeping away from both the entire Project and fantastic opportunities these technologies open in medicine. Well, well. Even if the officials refuse to recognize us, we are still eager to proceed with our work, despite everything. But to do this without your kind assistance is rather impossible: the whole volunteer Project aimed at bringing the wounded fighters back to normal life, exists at the expense of your benevolent contributions solely. So if you feel not indifferent for those guys who had sacrificed their well-being for our common peace, and if you would like to thank them for their gift al least a bit – please donate into the Project, as even a few hryvnias onto the Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded project’s account will bring full recuperation of these guys much closer. Dear friends, please do not stay aside, as this is the kind of a problem that we are capable of solving with our combined efforts only.
