Moscow.- The increasing destructive capacity of weapons used in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict poses new challenges for military medics trying to save soldiers wounded in battle. However, advanced technology developed by Russian specialists now makes it possible to restore limbs better and faster than ever before.
“Patients with such problems, before we treated them for years, they needed one, two or three years to recover, now it takes a maximum of six months,” said Evgeny Kukushko, head of the medical reconstruction and rehabilitation section of the Burdenko military hospital. in Moscow, who participated in one of the dozens of operations with this technology.
After this surgical intervention, a wounded soldier in Donbass was restored to health, who was later able to return to the front as an instructor.
“I was shot by a sniper, the bullet hit the knee area, […] they reconstructed my leg from fragments”, said the ex-combatant who is also a doctor by training. “From my own experience, I can judge that in the Burdenko hospital […] Currently, operations are carried out that when I studied they said they were impossible to perform,” he added.
Leonid Brizhan, deputy head of traumatology of the Russian Armed Forces and deputy director of the institution explained that the implant is installed in the affected area, after which it is filled with bone tissue elements specially grown with stem cells from the injured person, followed by the addition of muscle tissue and fragments of the patient’s body.
For the production of the implant, they first design the 3D models and their manufacturing starts only when the engineers and surgeons are 100% sure that everything will work correctly. The total time of the process does not last more than two weeks.
The hospital specialists also plan to try to improve this methodology with biodegradable implants, which, over time, dissolve and do not need to be removed later, being the basis for the formation of bone tissue in the patient, Brizhán said.
In this context, the doctors affirm that the Western sanctions imposed on Russia have served as an impetus to develop this type of technology, since now it is not necessary to import parts or knowledge from abroad.
