Ukrainian Surgeons Remove Unexploded Grenade From Wounded Soldier's Chest

Not your run of the mill surgical procedure. JL 

Samantha Lock reports in The Guardian:

A Ukrainian soldier has had successful surgery to remove an unexploded grenade from his chest. Surgeons removed the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman, while two sappers ensured the operation was conducted safely. The operation was carried out without using electrocoagulation — a common method to control bleeding during surgery — because “the grenade could detonate at any moment. ”The team of sappers neutralised the munition.

A Ukrainian soldier has had successful surgery to remove an unexploded grenade from his chest, senior officials in Kyiv have said.

Surgeons removed the weapon from just beneath the heart of the injured serviceman, while two sappers ensured the operation was conducted safely, said Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, who uploaded an image apparently showing an X-ray of the ordnance inside the soldier’s body.

“Military doctors conducted an operation to remove a VOG grenade, which did not break, from the body of the soldier,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s internal affairs ministerial adviser, said the team of sappers neutralised the munition, and described the procedure as one that would “go down in medical textbooks”.

The operation was carried out without using electrocoagulation — a common method to control bleeding during surgery — because “the grenade could detonate at any moment”, Maliar said.

One image showed the surgeon holding the explosive after the surgery was performed.

The soldier has since been sent for further rehabilitation and recovery.

Gerashchenko wrote in a Telegram update early on Thursday: “The unexploded part of the grenade was taken from under the heart. The grenade did not explode, but remained explosive.”

Citing Yevgenia Slivko, communications adviser to the commander of the medical forces in Ukraine’s military, Gerashchenko said the patient was believed to be about 28 years old.

“There have never been such operations in the practice of our doctors. Similar was during the war in Afghanistan. About the current patient, I can say that he was born in 1994, now he is sent for rehabilitation, his condition is stable. I think this case will go down in medical textbooks.”

Surgeons removed an unexploded grenade from just beneath the heart of an injured Ukrainian serviceman. Photograph: Hanna Maliar Facebook page