Surgeons at Ganga Hospital here have reattached the severed portions of two fingers of a Chinese engineer, who met with an accident when he was installing machinery at an industrial plant in Aurangabad in Maharashtra. The chopped off tips of the index finger and thumb were reattached 22 hours after the accident.
Chairman of the hospital’s Department of Plastic, Hand, Burns and Micro Surgery S. Raja Sabapathy said that the 25-year-old Chinese engineer, Gau Rong, met with the accident at 2 p.m. on December 17. He was examined by a senior plastic surgeon, Jiten Kulkarni, at a local hospital, who felt that reattachment would be a challenge as it was not a clean cut by a very sharp instrument.
As long segments of blood vessels might have been damaged, and the micro surgery for reattachment would be tough, Dr. Kulkarni referred the patient to Ganga Hospital.
Dr.Kulkarni helped out in preserving the severed part in a flask containing ice cubes. The severed portions were tightly sealed in a plastic cover as these should not come in direct contact with ice.
The direct contact would lead to irreparable damage to tissues and blood vessels. The patient and his attenders were instructed to replace the ice around the plastic bag periodically. It was an arduous journey by road to Pune and from there by air to Coimbatore via Chennai, taking 22 hours in all.
The plastic surgeons team led by Hari Venkatramani got to work as soon as Mr. Rong reached the hospital. The reattachment of the index finger was done in a three hour surgery. As the severed thumb tip was very small, the reattachment was done without microsurgery, using a composite graft method.
