Lviv Surgeons Successfully Reconstruct Lower Jaw of Injured Serviceman
Lviv surgeons from the medical center «Unbreakable» have performed a complex microsurgical operation to reconstruct the lower jaw of 25-year-old serviceman Andrii Hrushko from the Kherson region.
As reported on the center’s Facebook page, Andrii decided to join the army as soon as he turned 18. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he served in the Donetsk region. There, in March 2022, a fragment of a Russian shell shattered the soldier’s jaw and nearly took his life.
The military man was admitted to the Lviv center for surgery to reconstruct the lower jaw after two years of treatment in various medical facilities in Ukraine. Due to the absence of part of the bone and teeth, he was unable to eat properly during this time: chew and eat solid food. In order to fix this, surgeons inserted a titanium implant into the soldier’s jaw. However, it was not successful. Then the medics decided to replace the missing fragment with his own bone.
«This is one of the most difficult operations in maxillofacial surgery. In order for the bone to take, it is necessary to delicately connect a lot of tiny vessels as thin as human hair. Lviv specialists, together with American colleagues from the FACE to FACE mission, have successfully performed such microsurgical interventions several times. For example, last fall, they operated on over ten military personnel with similar injuries. The experience gained allowed Lviv maxillofacial surgeons to independently — without the help of foreign specialists — undertake the conduct of such a complex reconstructive operation,» the statement says.
