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Dubai: Butcher loses finger while using electric meat saw, doctors save it with timely action

Dubai - He had lost almost 90% of his middle finger of the right hand, including bone, and soft tissues.

A hospital has managed to restore the finger of a 58-year-old butcher, who suffered almost 100 per cent amputation of the middle finger of his right hand while cutting meat with an electric saw at a supermarket.

The patient, who suffered the injury at work, was rushed to the emergency ward at Dubai’s International Modern Hospital (IMH), where doctors found out that he was diabetic and time was of the essence to restore the damaged finger and avoid blood loss.

Dr Ehab Shehata, an orthopaedic surgeon at IMH, who performed the complex surgical procedure, said: “This was a very complex surgery, as the patient was diabetic and he had lost almost 90 per cent of his middle finger of the right hand, including bone, and soft tissues in the accident. We had just six hours to save his finger and also had to ensure that he didn’t lose too much blood at the same time. Due to the time and health limitations of the patient, the surgery required precision, skill, and, of course, the will of Allah. Fortunately, I managed to reconstruct the damaged finger by shortening the finger bone a bit and reconstructing the tissues around it before wrapping it in the skin flab of the same finger.”

To avoid blood loss, which was critical for the health of the patient, Dr Ehab said he had to fix the bone, and soft tissues in just one go without any scope of trial and error. “ There was no scope for error, so I had to perform the operation with great precision and very skillfully in order to save his finger. Except for one artery and little skin, everything was damaged in the finger. I used a special surgery technique to suture the finger in ‘Y’ shape as that helps increase the restoration of the skin by 25 per cent. We reconstructed the damaged tissues, fixed the bone fracture, and restored blood circulation to the finger,” Dr Ehab told Khaleej Times.

Dr Ehab said he removed the stitches from the patient’s finger two weeks after the surgery and removed the wire he had out for support almost a month after the surgery. The patient has resumed his normal work life and is able to move his finger almost perfectly. “I’m glad to see the recovery process of the patient who began moving his finger six weeks after the surgery and also resumed work two months after the operation. He has resumed 90 per cent of the finger function,” he added.

Dr. Othman Al-Bakri, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the chief medical officer at IMG, said that the facility specialises in the field of orthopaedic treatment and surgery for fractures and amputations.

saman@khaleejtimes.com