Bosnian War Victim Receives Surgery in Orange : Operation: UCI Medical Center surgeon says he removed scar tissue and shrapnel from the patient, who did not need a nerve graft after all.

Vildana Jahic was walking to a friend’s house last December in war-torn Sarajevo when the grenade hit. Unlike eight other Bosnians nearby, she survived the blast--but it left 40 pieces of shrapnel in the 27-year-old woman’s left arm, abdomen and face.

Doctors in Sarajevo did their best for her, said her husband, Jasmin, and so did the doctors in Germany, where she went for six weeks. But her left arm’s nerves were severely damaged, and a U. S. Army doctor told the young couple that for her to regain full use of that limb, she would need to go to the United States.

“I wanted to be in America to learn,” said Jasmin Jahic, a mechanical engineer, in English learned only a year ago. He added, however, that he had not expected that it would take a difficult surgical procedure to bring him and his wife to Southern California.

The couple are now residing in Orange as international refugees, and Vildana Jahic underwent four hours of surgery on Friday. It was to be a nerve graft, which only a few doctors in the nation can perform.

Dr. Israel Chambi, the surgeon, explained in a press conference Friday morning that he would remove a sensory nerve from her leg and attach it to the broken nerves in the left arm with sutures thinner than human hairs.

For him, it is a “routine” operation with a 75% chance of full nerve recovery for young and healthy patients who are treated within four months, he said.

But Chambi said at the end of the operation that he found that the nerves were actually not as damaged as they had seemed to be, and he did not have to perform the graft after all. He removed scar tissue that was pressuring the nerves, and shrapnel.

“We felt better not to have had to perform the nerve graft,” he said. “She’s already better. We noticed at the time of operation that the nerve conduit improved. . . . She will likely recover to normal.”

Physical therapy will only require three to six months, rather than a year, he said.

The doctors in Germany had recommended either Columbia University or UCI Medical Center in Orange for the peripheral nerve graft procedure. UCI responded first, said spokesman Elliott Bloom. Through the International Organization for Migration, which works with Catholic Charities in Santa Ana, the couple were flown via military plane from Germany to Washington, then to Orange County, where they arrived Thursday.

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As he waited patiently through the afternoon, Jasmin Jahic said the 12-hour flight had left them “tired, but because life (in Sarajevo) is hard--this is nothing.” He was optimistic for his wife: “I hope, I think she will be better than now.”

Vildana Jahic will be able to leave the hospital a few hours after the surgery, according to Chambi, and the couple “will stay here legally,” said Celine Prevost, coordinator of volunteers for resettlement and immigration for Catholic Charities.

The evacuation program is funding the couple through a grant from the U.S. State Department Bureau for Refugee Programs, and Chambi and the UCI Medical Center are providing the health care free of charge.

“I really like it here,” Jasmin Jahic said. “We have been here only two days, but all the people I met are beautiful people . . . kind.”