“They took the shrapne from my heart”

From the pocket, Serchi Melnyk pulls out a small rusty shard, neatly wrapped in paper.

He holds it. “It grazed my kidney, punched me into my lungs and my heart,” says the Ukrainian servicemen quietly.

The traces of dried blood are still visible on the fragments of the Russian drone, which in his heart sowing while he fought in eastern Ukraine.

“I didn’t even realize what it was at first – I thought I lacked my breath under the armor,” he says. “They had to get shrapnel from my heart.”

With the rise of an unmanned war in Ukraine, these injuries are becoming more common. Drones often carry weapons and materials that fragmented and cause more complex wounds a shard.

According to Ukrainian military physicians, the wounds are now up to 80% of the battlefield.

Surci’s injury would be fatal, it would be fatal.

“The fragment was as sharp as the blade. Doctors said it was a big piece and I was lucky to survive,” he says reflection.

But it was not just good luck that he was saved, it was a new piece of medical technology. Magnetic extractor.

Maximenko’s cardiovascular surgeons shows the sulfur surgeons from a metal fragment captured in the heart of Seriah before it is delicately removed with a thin magnet device.

“You do not need to do big cuts in the heart,” explains Dr. Maksimenko. “I just make a small incision, insert the magnet, and it pulls the shard.”

In just one year, the team of Dr. Makimenko conducted more than 70 successful cardiac operations with a device that changed the face of frontal medicine in Ukraine.

The development of these extractors occurred after the anterior physicians emphasized the urgent need for a safe, rapidly invasive way of removing Shrapnel.

Oleh Bajkov – who previously worked as a lawyer – managed this development. Since 2014, he has supported the army as a volunteer. He met physicians on the front line, and magnetic extractors were created from the conversations.

The concept is not new. Magnets were used to remove metal from wounds in the Crimean War in the 1850s. But the Oleh team upgraded the approach by creating flexible models for abdominal surgery, micro-teachers for delicate work and high-strength bone tools.

The operations became more accurate and less invasive. The magnet can pass along the wound surface to pull the fragments. Then the surgeons make a small incision and the piece is removed.

Holding a slender feather tool, Ole demonstrates its power, lifting a sledgehammer with a magnetic tip.

His work was highly appreciated by other military physicians, including David Nota, war veterans with zones around the world.

“Everything is developing in the war, which would never have thought of in civilian life,” he says.

Fragmentation wounds have increased from the changing war, and because they will take a long time to find that it believes that this device can become a change in the game.

He says the search for a shrapnel in patients is like a “needle search in a haystack”- it is not always successful and delays the treatment of other victims.

The search for fragments manually can be dangerous and requires large cuts that can lead to greater bleeding – “so to just find them using a magnet, brilliant.”

As a field instrument, it began that 3,000 units located in hospitals and front physicians, such as Andrew Alban, who said he came to the device, had been divorced.

It often works under fire, in trenches or makeshift open clinics, and sometimes without local anesthetics.

“My task is to save life – the wounds of the bandages and evacuate the soldiers,” he says.

There was no official certification of the magnetic hood.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Health states that medical devices must fully comply with the technical rules. However, in exceptional cases, such as martial law or emergency, the use of non -certified devices allows to meet the needs of the military and security forces.

There is no time in the heat of the war, explains the inspirer Ole. “These devices save life. If someone thinks my actions is a crime, I will take responsibility. I am even ready to go to jail when it comes to it. But then all the doctors who use these devices should also be imprisoned,” he adds in half a joke.

David notes agrees that certification is not yet a top priority and believes the device may be useful in other areas of war such as gas.

“It really doesn’t need it in the war. You do just what is important for life.”

Returning to Lion, Sergei Julia’s wife is just grateful that her husband had experienced his injury.

“I just want to praise the people who have invented this leakage,” she was tearing. “Thanks to them, my husband is alive.”

Additional report Jasmine Dyier and Kevin McGregor.