“Take fragments from my heart”

From his pocket, Serhiy Melnyk is pulled from a small rusty crust, carefully wrapped in paper.

He holds it. “I sponsored my kidneys, I penetrated my lungs and my heart,” says the Ukrainian soldier quietly.

The effects of dried blood are still visible on the shrapnel from a Russian drone who became in his heart while he was fighting in eastern Ukraine.

He says: “I didn’t even realize what it was in the beginning – I thought I was less than breathing under my body shield.” “They had to extract shrapnel from my heart.”

With the emergence of a drone war in Ukraine, these injuries became more common. Drones often carry weapons and materials that drink and cause more sophisticated fragments.

According to Ukrainian military paramedics, fragments wounds now constitute up to 80 % of the battlefield shocks.

Unconsisrated, my circus injury was a fatal.

“The fragment was like a code. Doctors said it is a big piece, and I was lucky to survive,” says opposite.

But it was not the luck that saved him, it was a new part of medical technology. A magnetic extract.

The cardiovascular surgeon displays the seminaries of Maximino, shots of the fragment of the besieged minerals in the heart of the beating process before it is accurately removed by a high -magnetic device.

“You don’t have to make large pieces in the heart,” explains Dr. Maximinko. “I just make a small incision, enter the magnet, and pull the fragments.”

In just one year, the Doctor Maksymenko team performed more than 70 successful heart operations with the device, which changed the face of the front medicine in Ukraine.

The development of these extracts came after the paramedics in the front lines highlighted the urgent need for a safe and fast way, and the minimum time to remove the fragments.

Oleh Bykov led – who used to work as a lawyer – this development. Since 2014, he has been supporting the army as a volunteer. The paramedics met on the confrontation line and from his conversations, magnetic extracts were created.

The concept is not new. The magnet was used to remove minerals from wounds to the Crimean War in the 1950s. But the Oliya team updated the approach, created flexible models of abdominal surgery, partial investment of careful work, and high -strength bone tools.

Operations have become more accurate and less distributed. The magnet can be turned on the surface of the wound to draw fragments. Then the surgeons perform a small incision and the piece is removed.

Oleh shows its strength by raising a heavy tool with a slim tool in the shape of a pen.

He praised his work by other paramedics in the war, including David Note, who is one of the war areas around the world.

He says: “In war, things that were not thinking about civilian life are developed,” he says.

Retail wounds have increased due to the change in the face of war, and because it takes a long time to find that it believes that this device can be a changing games.

The search for fragments in patients is like “searching for a needle in a straw pile”- it’s not always successful and delaying the treatment of other losses.

Searching for fragments can be dangerous manually and requires larger cracks that can cause more bleeding – “so that you are able to find them simply using a magnet.”

What started as a field tool has now been offered throughout Ukraine, where 3000 units were distributed to hospitals and doctor on the front lines, such as Andre Albana, who says he came to rely on the device.

It often works during fire, in trenches or temporary outpatient clinics, and sometimes without a local anesthetic.

He says: “My mission is to save lives – the bruising wounds and evacuate the soldiers.”

There was no official certificate for the magnetic extract.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Health says that medical devices must be fully compatible with technical regulations. However, in exceptional cases, such as customary rulings or emergency, it is allowed to use uncomplicated devices to meet the needs of the military and belonging forces.

At the height of the war, there is no time for the red painter, as explained by the mastermind. “These devices save lives. If someone believes that my actions are a crime, I will take responsibility. I am even ready to go to prison if it is about it. But then all doctors who use these devices should also be imprisoned,” he added.

David Note agrees that ratification is not a top priority at the present time and believes that the device can be useful in other war areas such as Gaza.

“In war, it is not really necessary. You are only doing the important things to save lives.”

Returning to Lviv, Sirhi’s wife, Yulia only grateful to her husband, survived his injury.

“I just want to praise those people who invented this extractor,” she says with tears. “Thank you, my husband is alive.”

Additional reports by Yasmine Dyer and Kevin McGregor.