BENGALURU: A 44-year-old woman, whose four fingers were accidentally severed, was successfully treated and all the fingers were replanted by doctors at Hosmat Hospital. Their left hand Manjula had got injured in an electric fodder-cutting machine around 11:30 AM on October 1. Her left hand’s thumb, index finger, middle finger and ring finger were completely severed. After getting first aid at Kolar, she was rushed to Hosmat hospital around 3 PM (four hours after the injury).
Her relatives had brought the severed fingers to the hospital wrapped in gauze and placed in an ice box. Dr Thomas Chandy, Chairman and Chief of Orthopaedics, at Hosmat Hospital, said, “Dr Kannan Karuppiah Kumar, Hand and Microvascular Surgeon, and Dr Deepu N K, Plastic and Microvascular surgeon, performed the surgery using a special operating microscope (which enlarges the tissues 10-20 times). The arteries of the fingers are the size of thin cotton threads. All severed arteries, veins, nerves and tendons were reconstructed and broken bones were fixed using surgical wires.”
The surgery lasted 12 hours and the patient is on a blood thinner to prevent clotting in the reconstructed blood vessels. She has also been given antibiotics. The timely intervention right from the preservation of the severed fingers and rushing the patient to the hospital for surgery helped in the restoration of the fingers, he said. The patient will be discharged in a couple of days, he added.