Updated

Surgeon Yurii Lazarenko, head of traumatology at the Military Medical Clinical Centre of the Central Region in Vinnytsia, uses titanium implants to save soldiers' arms, Ukrainska Pravda reported on 15 November 2026. Lazarenko has performed 60 shoulder and shoulder joint operations since 2023, and he says about 20% of those patients had an arm that would otherwise have been amputated. The implants are made by the Ukrainian company Velta Medical, and the Tykho Charitable Foundation raises money to buy them under its ReBone project. Ordinary prostheses cannot help where the shoulder and humerus are badly damaged but the rest of the arm is intact, so Lazarenko developed a protocol that uses a CT scan to build a 3D model of the implant. The report describes a soldier from the 72nd Brigade whom Lazarenko operated on in early 2024 after mortar shrapnel nearly shattered his shoulder, leaving skin and tendons as the only connection to his body. The implant was fitted successfully, but the patient then suffered cardiac arrest and survived after the team's efforts. A year later he sent a video showing that his arm was fully functional, and Lazarenko said his work had changed the man's life for the better. Lazarenko said the department's workload has grown from up to 20 surgical interventions a week before the full-scale invasion to 25 to 30 a day now.