Andhra Pradesh   

Severed hand rejoined

— Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

Success story: Patient recovering from the hand surgery at the hospital was shown to the media on Saturday.

HYDEERABAD: The heavy blade swishes down and rolls up in rhythmic motion. The paper cutting machine’s clackety clack noise is so natural that those working on the machine mechanically put bundles of just printed text books underneath the blade and remove the neatly cut books as the blade moves up.

But the last Saturday of April turned out to be not just another day for Ravi, who had been working as a paper cutter for the last 28 years. He pushed a stack of uncut books into the place, but the blade dropped unexpectedly even before he could pull out his hands.

As blood gushed, his co-workers realised that both his hands came under the heavy duty blade. While his right hand was chopped just near the wrist, fingers on the left hand got severed.

The panic-stricken colleagues summoned an ambulance and hurriedly packed the severed parts and rushed him to Yashoda Hospitals in Somajiguda. And for the next eleven hours, a three-member team of surgeons worked non-stop to reconnect the severed right hand. And they did succeed. “We could not do much about the left hand fingers. Our priority was to reconnect the right hand”, surgeons recalled a fortnight later, when they produced Ravi before mediapersons on Saturday.

For Ravi, it’s a miracle. Though grimacing with pain, he can now move his wrist and right hand fingers a bit.

“There is some pain, but it’s okay. I can work in a press, if not on the cutting machine”, Ravi asserted, even as plastic surgeon Bhavani Prasad removed the bandage to show the reconnected swollen hand to mediapersons. “We stringed the fingers with a K-Wire for additional support. That’s why he can’t move his fingers now”, Dr. Bhavani Prasad explained.

It wasn’t an easy job for the other two surgeons - Dr. T. Dasaradharama Reddy, an orthopaedic surgeon and Dr. Devender Singh, a vascular surgeon along with Dr. Bhavani Prasad. While Dr. Reddy rejoined the bones, Dr. Singh undertook the job of connecting the blood vessels.

The surgeons feel sorry that they could not do anything on the left hand. “The severed fingers were in ice and brought to us, while the severed hand was put in a plastic bag without ice. The blood vessels on severed fingers froze and we could not do much,” the surgeons explained.

They caution that in accidents like these, the severed parts have to be sealed in a plastic bag which could in turn be preserved in ice mixed with water. But they should not be packed with ice directly.

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