Lviv surgeons removed a fragment of a Russian mine from the brain of a boy who came under fire in Kherson

Surgeons removed a fragment of a Russian mine from the brain of a boy who came under fire in Kherson. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's Hospital

Lviv doctors removed a fragment of a Russian mine from the brain of a 9-year-old boy. In particular, the metal fragment was 8 millimeters long.

This was reported by the St. Nicholas Children's Hospital.

Doctors removed a fragment of a Russian mine from the brain of a 9-year-old boy. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's Hospital

Fragment of a Russian mine. Photo: St. Nicholas Children's Hospital.

It is noted that Mykhailo Volovykov from Kherson was seriously wounded in the head during mortar shelling of the city on New Year's Eve — December 31. When the attack began, the boy and a friend were having lunch in a cafe. The children quickly ran into the office, but this did not save them — the debris pierced the walls. Debris hit Mykhailo in the head, and his friend died on the spot.

Kherson doctors provided the boy with first surgical aid, and Mykolaiv doctors performed an operation to remove fragments of the crushed skull. However, the doctors left the fragments of the mine in the child's brain in place — it was too deep.

As the doctors reported, when the boy regained consciousness, it turned out that the left part of his body was completely paralyzed — his arm, leg and half of his face were immobilized. After several months of daily rehabilitation, the boy began to take his first steps and move more confidently.

However, soon the child began to have seizures. Doctors noted that they could have been caused by a fragment of a Russian mine that remained in the child's brain. Lviv surgeons agreed to perform an extremely difficult operation — the fragment stopped not far from the area that controls the movements of the entire left part of the body.

«We had to find and remove a small piece of metal 5 cm deep in the brain and in a very narrow area. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. The boy could have been completely paralyzed,» says child neurosurgeon Mykhailo Lohva.

Under the control of a microscope and a neuromonitoring system, doctors were able to safely reach the part of the brain where the fragment was located — it was retrieved. After a few days, the boy regained consciousness.

The operation was successful — the boy's motor functions were not disturbed, but he has a long rehabilitation ahead of him.

We will remind that Ukrainian surgeons performed a unique lung transplant operation from a posthumous donor.

It was previously reported that in Lviv, doctors successfully administered stem cells to three children who had impaired limb mobility.

In addition, Lviv cardiac surgeons, using the Da Vinci robot, performed an operation on the heart of a man with a pre-infarction condition for the first time.