20-year-old regains mobility in hand after complicated surgeries

Ponniyammal, a resident of Kancheepuram, suffered a nerve cut that led to loss of sensation in her hand and was unable to move it. A team of orthopaedic doctors, plastic surgeons at Parvathy Hospitals examined the patient and found her right upper limb sustained crush and radial nerve injury.

Doctors tried to stabilise the fracture temporarily and performed various procedures to remove the damaged tissues from the wound to promote healing. Later, the doctors performed a split skin grafting procedure to cover deep structures, restore dynamic function of the arm and to prevent joint contractures.

Speaking about the procedures, Dr Mithun, a senior orthopaedic surgeon at Parvathy Hospital, said, “After a month of observation, an open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) and bone grafting was performed to reconstruct the broken bones to bring them back to the normal position. This is an extremely complex situation in which we had successfully operated to encourage healing and regain normal function of her upper limb.”

Medical experts said that it was challenging to reconstruct and regain the mobility despite severe crush injury with nerve injury. The patient can move her hand slightly after thesurgical procedures which would otherwise have led to amputation of her upper limb.