Ukrainian surgeons independently transplanted a bone from the lower leg to the jaw for the first time

In Lviv, Ukrainian surgeons performed a complex microsurgical operation on 25-year-old Andriy Hrushko to reconstruct the lower jaw. For the first time, this was done without the help of foreign colleagues.

This was reported in the “Nezlamni” rehabilitation center.

Andriy Hrushko is a military serviceman from the village of Chkalove in the Kherson region. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, he served in the Donetsk region, where on March 12, 2022, Russian debris crushed his jaw.

"It was an ordinary day at the front. We held positions and watched the enemy. I was looking through binoculars at the time it flew. The blast wave stunned me. I couldnʼt speak, I couldnʼt orient myself in space, I didnʼt even understand what happened," he recalls about the circumstances of the injury.

Andrei was evacuated from the battlefield by his comrades, stopping the bleeding. After two years of treatment in various medical institutions, he ended up in the "Nezlamni" rehabilitation center, where he underwent an operation to reconstruct the lower jaw by inserting a titanium implant, which did not take root.

To restore the jaw, it was decided to replace the missing fragment with the patientʼs own bone. This is one of the most difficult operations in maxillofacial surgery. In order for the bone to take root, it is necessary to connect a bunch of small vessels as thick as a human hair.

A team of doctors led by the head of the Head and Neck Center Oleh Kovtunyak took part of the tibia along with muscles and blood vessels and transplanted it into the jaw. They managed to successfully sew up all the vessels. After that, the surgeons closed the wound with a flap of the patientʼs own skin. This complex microsurgical operation lasted 14 hours. The bone took root.

Prior to that, such operations were conducted with American colleagues of the Face to Face mission.

• Earlier, on December 19, 2024, the hospital of the "Dobrobut" medical network in Kyiv at 3 Simya Idzykovskikh Street announced that it would perform free surgical operations for war victims for six months — both military personnel and their children, as well as civilians. The program will be valid until May 15, 2024.