Doctors use war-time technique to save car crash victim’s hand
SURGEONS used a war-time skin-grafting technique to save the hand of a car crash victim by attaching it to his abdomen for several weeks.
Martin Shaw from Leicester suffered severe injuries to his right hand and forearm in an accident on September 9.
To save his hand, the doctors used a unique technique known as a pedicled flap, which involved attaching it to the abdomen to help the skin tissue recover.
Recalling the accident and his injuries, Shaw told the BBC, “What happened after the car stopped is a bit of a blur but I remember seeing my arm and thinking ‘that’s it, I’ve lost it’.”
“I couldn’t really take it in as what they planned to do was explained to me, but I was willing to try anything to save my hand and arm,” the 35-year-old said.
Plastic surgeon Nakul Patel, from University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, said, “Mr Shaw sustained multiple fractures on all his fingers and thumb and a large amount of his skin, tendons and muscle had all been torn away.
“The first thing to do was clean the wounds, there was mud, gravel, grass and road surface in all his wounds and that posed a high risk of infection.”
He told Shaw that to save his hand, they needed to cover his injuries with a healthy tissue.
Patel opened a patch of skin across the patient’s abdomen and attached it to his thumb and hand to enable healthy skin to cover his injuries and fractures.
“This is a technique that has been around for a long, long time and was certainly popularised in the world wars,” he said.
“We don’t have to do it very often in this modern day but there are exceptional circumstances such as this one and we wanted to do everything possible to save his hand,” he added.
Shaw, a father of four, said while he couldn’t really understand what the doctors had planned to do, but he was willing to give it a go to save his hand and arm. His hand was stitched to his chest for around two weeks.
Shaw said it gave him a strange feeling, but thanked Patel and other staff members for saving his hand. “I can’t thank Mr Patel and all of the staff here enough. Nothing has been too much trouble for anyone, the care I’ve had – I’ve been blown away. There aren’t enough words,” he said.
Patel said most people think that plastic surgery is purely cosmetic but Shaw’s case showed it was otherwise.