“They took my heart from my heart”

From his pocket, Seri Melnequin thrown out a small rusty sharp, which was neatly wrapped in paper.

He catches it. “It grazed my kidney, pierced my lungs and my heart,” Ukrainian soldiers quietly say.

Dried blood scars are still appearing on a pellet from a dandruff drone that was recorded in his heart, while he was fighting in the eastern Ukraine.

He says, “I didn’t even realize what it was at first – I felt that I was less than the breath under the armor of my body,” they say. “They had to remove the pellet from my heart.”

With the rise of drone war in Ukraine, these injuries are becoming more common. Drones often carry arms and materials that laminate and cause more complex pellet wounds.

According to Ukrainian military medics, pellet wounds now create 80% of the trauma of the battlefield.

Undevished, Seri’s injury would be fatal.

“The piece was sharp like a blade. The doctors said it was a big piece, and I was lucky to survive,” he reflected.

But it was not just luck that saved him, it was a new piece of medical technique. A magnetic tongs.

The cardiovascular surgeon Seri Maksimeno shows footage of a piece of metal trapped in the heart before being delicately removed by a thin magnet-split device.

“You don’t have to make a big cut in the heart,” Dr. Maximenko explains. “I just make a small incision, put the magnet, and it pulls out the shrapnel.”

In just one year, Dr. Maximenco’s team has performed more than 70 successful heart operation with the device, which has changed the face of the front-line drug in Ukraine.

The development of these extractors came to light, when front-line medics highlighted the immediate requirement of a safe, fast, minimum invasive way to remove the shrapnel.

Oleh Baykov – who worked as a lawyer – left this development. Since 2014, he has been supporting the army as a volunteer. He met Medics on the front line and his conversation made magnetic twigs.

The concept is not new. In the 1850s, magnets were used as a Crimean War to remove metal from wounds. But Oleh’s team modernized the approach, leading to flexible models for stomach surgery, micro-auctures for delicate work and high-power tools for bones.

The operation has become more accurate and less aggressive. The magnet can be run along the surface of a wound to take out. The surgeons then form a small incision and the piece is removed.

Holding a slim pen -shaped tool, Oleh performs his power by lifting a sledaimmer with a magnetic tip.

His work has been appreciated by other War Medics including David Not, an experienced David Not of War areas around the world.

“In war, things develop that never used to think in civil life,” they say.

The changing face of war has increased the wounds of fragmentation, and because they take a long time to find out that he believes that this tool may be a game changer.

He says that the search for pellets in patients is like “looking for a needle in a histor”- it is not always successful and delays the treatment of other casualties.

Manually searching for pieces can be dangerous and requires large incisions that can cause over bleeding – “So simply using a magnet is simply simple to be able to find them.”

The beginning that started as a field tool is now rolled out in Ukraine, in which 3,000 units have been distributed to hospitals and front-line medics, such as Andry Alban who says he has come to rely on the device.

He often works under fire, in trenches or mechanisms outdoor clinics, and sometimes without local anesthetic.

“My job is to save life – the strip wounds and soldiers were emptied,” they say.

There is no official certification of magnetic tongs.

The Ukrainian Health Ministry says that medical equipment should fully follow technical rules. However, in extraordinary cases, such as martial law or emergency conditions, the use of unproven equipment is allowed to meet the needs of military and security forces.

At the height of the war, there is no time for red tape, the mastermind Oleh explains. “These devices save life. If someone thinks that my work is a crime, I will take responsibility. I am also ready to go to jail. But it comes to him. But then all doctors using these devices should also be disorganized,” he adds half -joking.

David Not agrees that certification is not a top priority for now and believes that the device may prove to be helpful in other war areas like Gaza.

“In war, this is not really necessary. You only do things that are important to save life.”

Back to Liviv, Seri’s wife Yulia is just grateful that her husband survived her injury.

“I just want to praise those who invented this extractor,” she says with tears. “Thanks to him, my husband is alive.”

Additional reporting by Jasmine Dior and Kevin McGregor.