Abdominal flap for hand reconstruction!!
Probably a weird feeling trying to wiggle your fingers inside your body. Surgeons have sewn this man’s hand to a 'pocket' inside his abdomen in order to save it from being amputated. The patient lost both his fingers and all the skin from his hand after suffering a degloving injury in a workplace accident. His hand had been pulled into and trapped between two coil rollers in an industrial machine used to make plastic tableware. The skin had been torn off, destroying tissue, severing blood supply and leaving bones and tendons exposed with very little skin on the palm and dorsum of his hand. When the 42-year-old was rushed to hospital, the surgeons decided that rather than amputate, they could salvage the hand by surgically tucking it into a soft-tissue pouch in his belly, where it stayed for 6 weeks. Without this procedure, there would be a high risk of infection and the tissue and tendons would rot away, leaving amputation as the last resort. His hand was removed from the pouch with the skin of his abdomen successfully covering the back. Another procedure done a week later involved splicing skin from his left thigh and grafting it onto his palm.
Why was that decided? What’s the aetiology if anyone knows?! Never heard of this before.
