Surgeon Yurii Lazarenko saves Ukrainian soldiers' arms with titanium implants
Yurii Lazarenko, head of traumatology at a military clinic in Vinnytsia, fits wounded soldiers with custom titanium implants for severe shoulder injuries. Of 60 shoulder operations since 2023, amputation was avoided in 20% of cases.
Lieutenant Colonel Yurii Lazarenko of Ukraine's Armed Forces Medical Forces, who heads the traumatology department at the Military Medical Clinical Centre of the Central Region in Vinnytsia, fits soldiers with severe shoulder joint injuries with custom-made titanium implants. The method makes it possible to keep an arm that would otherwise be amputated or left useless. With the war producing a heavy flow of casualties in Ukraine, such an approach can substantially change wounded soldiers' lives.
How the method works
By Lazarenko's calculation, about 17% of the injuries he treats are wounds to the shoulder and shoulder joint. Often the shoulder and humerus are badly damaged while the elbow and hand remain healthy, with blood and nerves still reaching the arm, yet it does not function. Ordinary prostheses cannot help here, so Lazarenko developed a new protocol.
Doctors first perform a CT scan and use it to build a 3D model of the humerus. A titanium implant is then ordered from the Ukrainian company Velta Medical. The Tykho Charitable Foundation continuously raises money for these implants through its ReBone project.
Since 2023, Lazarenko has performed 60 operations specifically on the shoulder and shoulder joint. Amputation was avoided in about 20% of cases; in the rest, the arm would not have been amputated but was non-functional.
Examples from practice
In early 2024 he operated on a soldier of the 72nd Brigade whose shoulder had been nearly shattered by mortar shrapnel. A year later the patient sent a video showing he could lift objects and even do press-ups. Another soldier, who developed tissue necrosis around a prosthesis after treatment in Germany, had it replaced with a Velta Medical implant; treatment with rehabilitation took about six months. A soldier of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, wounded by an FPV drone, received an implant for part of his shoulder blade.
Scepticism and workload
Lazarenko admits that some colleagues in Ukraine and abroad are sceptical, as the approach is relatively new in reconstructive surgery. He has presented it in the US and Germany. He says that before the full-scale invasion his department performed up to 20 surgical interventions a week, while now it handles 25–30 a day.
