Doctors graft left hand to right ankle

Surgeons in China have restored the use of a hand severed in an industrial accident by grafting it onto a man’s ankle for a month before re-attaching it to his arm.

He was rushed to a local hospital where he found out he would need an amputation.

“My mind went blank at that moment and I just thought that I had lost one hand”, he recalled.

The rare operation was performed at a hospital in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in central China.

Dr Tang Juyu, head of microsurgery at the hospital, decided he could give Zhou a chance to “revive” his lost hand – with an operation he and his team had already successfully performed once in 2013 under similar circumstances.

The hand needed to be kept alive (by having blood run through it) for a month to allow the damage to the arm to heal. So Zhou’s doctor, Dr. Tang, decided the best option was to graft the left hand to Zhou’s right ankle, reports the Daily Mail.

Instead, they grafted the severed appendage to his ankle so it had a blood supply to keep it alive.

Zhou was told by doctors that his left hand would have to be amputated.

So meanwhile they attached the hand to the patient’s right ankle.

The hand was reportedly then re-attached to the left arm in a separate operation said to have lasted 10 hours.

“If it falls short of blood for long, the tissues dies and it would be impossible to get it back”, he said. “The time is even shorter for a separated limb”, said Tang.

Reported by People Dr Tang believes, Zhou is now able to slightly move his fingers, but he will still need much rehabilitation before regaining full function.