"They took shrapnel out of my heart" - a life saved by Ukrainian ingenuity

BBC News

01-07-2025

From his pocket, Serhiy Melnyk pulls out a small rusty shard, wrapped neatly in paper.He holds it up. "It grazed my kidney, pierced my lung, and my heart," says the Ukrainian serviceman quietly.Traces of dried blood are still visible on the shrapnel from a Russian drone that became lodged in his heart while he was fighting in eastern Ukraine."I didn't even realise what it was at first — I thought I was just short of breath under my body armour," he says. "They had to extract shrapnel out of my heart."With the rise of drone warfare in Ukraine, these injuries are becoming more common. Drones often carry weapons and materials which fragment and cause more complex shrapnel wounds.According to Ukrainian military medics, shrapnel wounds now make up to 80% of battlefield trauma.Untreated, Serhiy's injury would have been fatal."The fragment was as sharp as a blade. Doctors said it was a large piece, and that I was lucky to survive," he says reflectively.But it wasn't just luck that saved him, it was a new piece of medical technology. A magnetic extractor.
'I make a small incision and insert the magnet'
Cardiovascular surgeon Serhiy Maksymenko shows footage of the metal fragment trapped in Serhiy's beating heart before it is delicately removed by a thin magnet-tipped device."You don't have to make large cuts in the heart," explains Dr Maksymenko. "I just make a small incision, insert the magnet, and it pulls the shrapnel out."In just one year, Doctor Maksymenko's team has performed over 70 successful heart operations with the device, which has changed the face of front-line medicine in Ukraine.The development of these extractors came after front-line medics highlighted the urgent need for a safe, fast, minimally invasive way to remove shrapnel.Oleh Bykov - who used to work as a lawyer - drove this development. Since 2014 he has been supporting the army as a volunteer. He met medics on the front line and from his conversations the magnetic extractors were created.The concept isn't new. Magnets were used for removing metal from wounds as far back as the Crimean War in the 1850s. But Oleh's team modernised the approach, creating flexible models for abdominal surgery, micro-extractors for delicate work, and high-strength tools for bones.Operations have become more precise and less invasive. The magnet can be run along the surface of a wound to draw fragments out. Surgeons then make a small incision and the piece is removed.Holding a slim pen-shaped tool, Oleh demonstrates its power by lifting a sledgehammer with the magnetic tip.
His work has been commended by other war medics including David Nott, a veteran of war zones around the world."In war, things get developed which would never have been thought of in civilian life," he says.Fragmentation wounds have increased due to the changing face of war, and because they take a long time to find he believes this device could be a game changer.He says looking for shrapnel in patients is like "looking for a needle in a haystack"- it is not always successful and delays treatment of other casualties.Searching for fragments manually can be dangerous and requires bigger incisions that can cause more bleeding – "so to be able just to simply find them using a magnet is ingenious."
What began as a field tool has now been rolled out across Ukraine, with 3,000 units distributed to hospitals and front-line medics, like Andriy Alban who says he has come to rely on the device. He often works while under fire, in trenches or makeshift outdoor clinics, and sometimes without local anaesthetic."My job is to save lives - bandage wounds and get soldiers evacuated," he says.There has been no official certification of the magnetic extractor.The Ukrainian Health Ministry says medical devices must comply fully with technical regulations. However, in exceptional cases, such as martial law or a state of emergency, the use of uncertified devices is allowed to meet the needs of the military and security forces.At the height of war, there's no time for red tape, mastermind Oleh explains. "These devices save lives. If someone thinks my actions are a crime, I'll take responsibility. I'm even prepared to go to jail if it comes to that. But then all the doctors who use these devices should be incarcerated too," he adds half jokingly.David Nott agrees that certification is not a top priority for now and believes the device could prove helpful in other war zones such as Gaza."In war, it's not really necessary. You only do the things which are important to save lives."Back in Lviv, Serhiy's wife Yulia is just grateful her husband survived his injury."I just want to praise those people who invented this extractor," she says tearfully. "Thanks to them, my husband is alive."
Additional reporting by Jasmin Dyer and Kevin McGregor.