Doctors re-plant completely separated forearm of woman

Bhubaneswar: Barsha Das, a 25-year-old woman from Odisha’s Puri district has all praise for the doctors of AIIMS Bhubaneswar who have successfully replanted her completely separated left forearm.

A team of doctors from the AIIMS have successfully replanted the completely separated left forearm conducting surgery for 10 hours.

Barsha came to the emergency department of AIIMS Bhubaneswar on December 9 at around 9 p.m. with traumatic amputation of left forearm below elbow.

As per the history provided by the patient, she was working at her home and her dupatta got stuck in the rice cutting machine along with her left hand at around 4 p.m. following which she was taken to a local government hospital along with the amputated hand where primary treatment was given, bleeding was secured and dressing was done.

The amputated part was wrapped in a gauge pad and kept in an ice bath by the person who attended her in the local hospital.

The patient was immediately planned for reimplantation and was taken up for surgery on the same night at around 11.30 p.m. by the team lead by Dr. Sanjay Kumar Giri (head of burns and plastic surgery).

The team of physicians from plastic surgery, orthopaedics and anaesthesia departments have performed the surgery.

At first, the team of doctors took out the amputated part from the fridge and started bench dissection, all the vital structures identified and tagged 3 cm bone were shortened, said doctor Giri.

Then, he said, the patient was taken into the operating room and anaesthesia was given.

Amputated stumps opened and debridement was done and all the vital structures were isolated.

After that, the amputated part was attached to the body by first two bony fixations, then arterial circulation was established along with the vein, followed by two major nerves that were repaired along with muscles and skin, Giri said.

The doctor said the surgery went up till 8 a.m. in the morning and the patient was then shifted to ICU.

After the tenth post-operative day, we took the patient to the operating room again as the skin around the elbow was not good.

Under anaesthesia, we had removed all the devitalised skin and covered it with skin graft.

“It has been around two weeks following the incident. Currently, the limb is viable,” added Giri.

AIIMS Bhubaneswar executive director Ashutosh Biswas on Thursday visited the young lady in the ward and applauded the effort of doctors for the heroic job.

Biswas also praised Barsha for her bravery and assured her a prosperous future.

–IANS

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