28 July, 2015:
A Chinese worker, after getting his left hand caught in a spinning blade in the factory in which he was working, had to surgically get his hand removed and had it stitched back onto his leg to save the disembodied extremity from dying.
The worker, identified as Zhou, was rushed to a local hospital in China’s Hunan province where he was told that he’d lose the hand. He was then transferred to Xiangya Hospital in the province’s capital which had experienced surgeons in the field of “replantation”.
The damage done to both the arm and the hand were severe and it would take time for them to recover. So, it was decided to hook the hand up to a blood supply from another part of the body, in this case the leg.
“In normal temperatures, a severed finger should resume blood supply within 10 hours. The time is even shorter for a separated limb. If it falls short of blood for long, the tissues die and it would be impossible to get it back,” said Dr. Tang Juyu who is the head of hand microsurgery at Xiangya Hospital.
The reattachment surgery took 10 hours. Though it will take long time for Zhou’s hand to fully function, he has shown slight movement in his fingers.
