Successful Forearm Replantation At AIIMS Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: In a rare surgery, doctors of AIIMS Bhubaneswar have successfully performed replantation of a 25-year-old woman’s forearm that had got detached in a mishap.

According to sources, Barsha Das of Krushnaprasad in Puri district came to the emergency department of AIIMS Bhubaneswar on December 9 at around 9 pm with traumatic amputation of left forearm below elbow.

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

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

The patient was immediately planned for reimplantation and taken up for surgery at around 11.30 pm by a team led by Dr Sanjay Kumar Giri. The team included Dr Santanu Suba, Dr Priyanka Pant, Dr Akanksha Rajpoot, Dr Vishnu from plasic surgery and Dr Nikhil and Dr Manjoy from orthopaedics.

From anaesthesia team, Dr Jayant Mitra, Dr Hrushikesh and Dr Shailaja & nursing officer Babulal & Jaswant singh were present, sources in AIIMS Bhubaneswar said.

At first, the doctors took out the amputated part from the fridge and started bench dissection, all the vital structures identified and tagged. Three cm bone was shortened, they said.

Then patient was taken into the operating room and anaesthesia given. Amputated stump opened and debridement done and all the vital structures were isolated.

After that, the amputated part was attached to the body by first two bony fixation, then arterial circulation was established along with vein, followed by repair of two major nerves along with muscles and skin.

The surgery went up till 8 am and the patient was then shifted to ICU. After tenth post operative day, doctors took the patient to operating room again as the skin around the elbow was not good.

Under anaesthesia, doctors removed all the devitalised skin and covered with skin graft. “Today it is around two weeks following the incident. At present the limb is viable,” they added.