Rare surgery saves child’s foot
Published: July 25, 2005
Quick reaction and presence of mind saved 12-year-old Hansraj’s foot, which was severed in a freak accident. It helped plastic surgeons at King George’s Medical University (KGMU) to successfully replant the toe severed from the foot through an “emergency microvascular digit salvage surgery”.
Hansraj, son of a farmer hailing from Rai Bareli met with a freak accident on Friday. He was casually sitting on a cultivator attached to a tractor, when suddenly somebody turned on the ignition of the tractor.
Hansraj tried to jump off the cultivator, but slipped and his foot got trapped beneath the cultivator.
The cultivator attached to the tractor suddenly dropped, chopping off the great toe and the second toe from the foot.
Bleeding profusely, he was taken to the nearby village medical facility where the wound was dressed and then on the advise of local practitioners he was rushed to KGMU Trauma Centre. Fortunately, the family brought the severed parts with them.
The accident happened at around 2 pm and Hansraj reached the Trauma Centre around 4 pm.
He was attended by a team of plastic surgeons, led by Dr Rajiv Agarwal, assistant professor in the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery, assisted by Dr Vinay, Dr Divya and Dr Kohli along with a team of anaesthesia department led by senior professor GP Singh.
Amazon discount!
God at the Speed of Light“I was supervising another patient, when I saw Hansraj in pain with complete severance of his great toes. Since he was brought within two-three hours of the injury, the severed parts were in good condition. Immediately, a decision for emergency microvascular surgery was undertaken to restore and rejoin the amputated toes,” Dr Agarwal told TOI.
The patient was rolled into the operation theatre and the arduous task of joining back the severed toes began. The feeding vessels of both the severed parts and the rest of the foot were first isolated and dissected out.
Then the bone ends were freshened and prepared for fixation. After uniting the bones, the soft tissues including the tendons, nerves and the vessels were gradually put back on to the foot. The skin wounds were then repaired.
The entire operation lasted seven hours and patient was returned to ward on Saturday at 4 am. Doctors said that the patient was recovering fast.
The patient had to spent around Rs 5,000 for his entire treatment, including the surgical procedure, which would have costed more than Rs 1 lakh in private hospital.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: