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JJ Hospital doctors fix Panvel boy’s detached thumb
Doctors at Sir JJ Hospital successfully reattached the detached thumb of a six-year-old boy from Panvel. The thumb got stuck and detached when the boy tried to close the lift door. The doctors performed a micro vascular surgery to rejoin the damaged tissues and bone ends. The boy has been discharged and will be monitored for functionality.
A team of doctors at Sir JJ Hospital’s plastic surgery department fixed a detached thumb of a six-year-old boy from Panvel.
On August 31 morning, Bhavnik Kumar was playing with his younger brother Manvik, 2, in the corridor of their third floor flat when Manvik suddenly entered the lift.
“We had asked Bhavnik to ensure he did not enter the lift. In a state of panic, Bhavnik ran and managed to pull Manvik out. But while closing the door, someone pressed the lift button and his left thumb got stuck and detached,” his father, Sachin, said.
Hearing his cry, neighbours rushed in and found the detached thumb on the roof of the lift. Sachin then took Bhavnik to a few nearby hospitals. “None had the facility to reattach the thumb. We then admitted him to JJ Hospital in the afternoon,” Sachin said.
Dr Yogesh Jaiswal, the plastic surgeon who operated on Bhavnik, said luckily a local hospital had cleaned his wound and had correctly preserved the detached thumb in a plastic bag and kept ice around it.
“As soon as the fitness tests were done, we prepared him for a micro vascular surgery. It started at midnight and went on till six in the morning where the damaged tissues were carefully removed, and bone ends were trimmed before joining the thumb. It also involved putting together the soft tissues on either side of the wound,” he said.
The doctors managed to replant the finger but said they needed to observe it for its functionality.
Bhavnik was discharged on Wednesday. “He will come for a follow-up next week. We are hopeful the finger will survive,” the doctor said.
Dr Jaiswal further said that if a limb/organ got detached, it should be preserved in the cold, but the skin should not be in direct touch with the ice. “If the organ is detached you should put the organ in a plastic bag, seal it, and put it in an ice box or with ice.”
