In central China, doctors decided upon a surgical procedure that would leave everyone scratching their heads (and feeling a little bit queasy)—they attached a man's severed hand to his leg to give it time to heal before grafting it back onto the man's wrists.
The patient, a factory worker called Zhou, lost his left hand in a workplace incident "involving a spinning blade machine," according to the Daily Mail. At the Xiangya Hospital in Changsha, the head of microsurgery Dr. Tang Juyu decided Zhou was a suitable candidate for the procedure, which his team had done successfully once in 2013.
The procedure is meant to give the nerves and tendons in the severed hand to time to heal before reattaching it. A severed finger, Dr. Tang explained, needs to be reconnected to blood supply within 10 hours—for severed limbs, however, that window is much shorter.
"If a limb is short of blood for too long, its tissues die and it will be unsalvageable," said Dr. Tang.
Zhou's hand was attached to his leg for over a month. Dr. Tang's team successfully regrafted it to his arm in a 10-hour surgery. Dr. Tang reported that Zhou can now move his fingers, but will need a lot of rehabilitation before he regains full use of his hand.
[via Daily Mail]
