Penza, 20 December 2016. PenzaNews. Doctors of the Zakharyin Penza clinical hospital carried out a successful operation of hand replantation to a man.

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“The patient was admitted to the hospital on December 7: he received abjunction of the right hand during the work with machinery. […] In the operating room, during 11 hours, doctors carried out hand replantation. It means that the hand was returned, tendons, nerves and vessels were sewn, practically, the dead hand was brought back to life,” the head of the traumatology department No. 2 of the Zakharyin Penza clinical hospital Mikhail Scherbakov told the journalists.

According to him, the operation became possible only because the hand was transported within the shortest period of time and all necessary rules were observed – in order to maintain limb viability, the time between the injury and the reestablishment of the blood flow must not exceed 16-18 hours.

“The operation stages are quite lengthy and laborious. First, it is important to restore bones if it is needed, then – tendons and nerves. And only after that, doctor starts sewing vessels, because if we want to help a patient quickly and sew vessels from the very beginning, later we will have technical problems in restoring tendons and nerves. The vessels will be injured even more and will probably require additional seams,” the doctor explained.

Mikhail Scherbakov added that in such situations every cut off segment should be put in a separate bag and after that – in the cooling agent such as snow or ice, for example.

He added that it is too early to predict how soon the full recovery of the hand will be achieved because only 13 days passed since the moment of the operation.

“No sooner than in 6-8 months, we will be able to speak about the function of the hand and the degree of its recovery. We believe that the patient has good chances for the hand function recovery,” the doctor specified.

The head of the traumatology department noted that such operations are scarce in Penza – they are carried out about once a year because people seldom receive such injuries.

Mikhail Scherbakov also mentioned two recent cases of getting injuries at production sites in the Penza region – at the factory “Nevsky conditer” in Mokshan and at the plant “Atmis-sakhar” in Kamenka.

“As for the first case, I can say that we could not restore the limb at all. When it comes to the second case, I cannot comment on it because I do not have enough information,” the doctor of the Zakharyin Penza clinical hospital explained.

The patient Alexei Chevtaev, whose right hand was saved, explained that the injury happened because he “put the hand in the wrong place”.

“It was just a coincidence. It is hard to do it on purpose, and an incident is an incident,” he noted.

According to him, he immediately understood what happened. The first thing that the man tried to do was to stop the bleeding and after that the injured, who was alone at that time, called an ambulance.

“I had to dial the number with my nose,” Alexei Chevtaev said.

According to him, the cut off hand was found and fast prepared for transportation by the doctors and he did not see it before their arrival.

“I do not feel pain as such, besides, the hand does not feel anything now,” he described his feelings after the operation.