In a special feather in the cap of the city'smedical fraternity, doctors from Pune were able to improve the hand mobility of a three-year-old girl from Iraq,
who was born without thumbs. The child had been born and lived with four fingers on each hand, limiting her ability to hold objects in an optimal manner.
In the procedure, performed at Fatimanagar's Inamdar Hospital on March 9, a team of medicos wielded pollicisation — a hand surgery technique in which an existing finger is made functional as a thumb.
Twenty one days after the surgery, the plaster has come off, and the patient, Zahraa Hussein Abdali Badrah, can now pick up objects and scribble quite easily. Her family hails from Najaf, and the girl had lost her father to an illness when she was only nine months old. She was accompanied to India for the surgery by her mother and uncle.
Zahraa's mother, Kaherah Jaber Salman Al Aameri, was beaming to witness her daughter pick up objects and play with them with ease. She shared, "Life for my child will be easier after the surgery." Struggling to express his gratitude in English, her maternal uncle, Yaareb Jabbar Salman Al Aameri, who owns a confectionery business back home, nodded, "Doctors suggested that she play with a squeeze ball regularly to improve her hand movement."
Speaking about the 2.5 hour-long event, the hospital's consultant plastic surgeon, Dr Sumit Saxena, told Mirror, "The thumb is the most essential finger, allowing us to write and hold objects easily. During the surgery, we made incisions to create a webbed space and altered the size and plane of the index finger, making it functional as a thumb. It is an intricate process, as it is important to ensure that muscles and tendons aren't damaged. Magnification was used to identify and understand structures, so as to best retain sensitivity and maintain mobility."
The child's brachial plexus was injured, which had reduced the strength and mobility of her left hand; she also suffered from radial deviation, which means her wrist and hand are not set straight.
Dr Murtaza Adeeb, FRCS (Orth), senior orthopaedic surgeon at Inamdar Hospital, had met the family in February on a visiti to Iraq in a professional capacity. At the time, several doctors in Iraq had been unable to give the family any definitive answers about Zahraa's future. Dr Adeeb had then recommended a journey to Pune for the procedure. He shared, "The index finger on her right hand was rotated to make it function as a thumb, as there is very little one can do without thumbs. Pollicisation couldn't be done on her left hand as there is a possible injury to her brachial plexus."
While the procedure is not rare, it is certainly complex. Informed Dr Saxena, "I have personally seen three such cases in the last eight years." Dr Sameer Desai, a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon attached with multiple prominent hospitals in the city, shared that he also sees at least one or two children with a similar case per year on an average, adding that a general orthopaedic might see one such case in five years. "The absence of thumbs highly limits mobility, and this afflicts maybe 0.1 per cent of a population of 1,000. Pollicisation is a complex procedure, as it is important to maintain functionality and utility of the finger while ensuring that blood vessels are intact and no damage is caused," informed Desai.
Dr Anil Bhatia, consultant hand surgeon at the Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, shared that he comes across 10-15 such cases annually, added, "The pattern of pollicisation surgeries hasn't changed much in the last 55 years, as no other better procedure has been found," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment