At the transition time between the old year 2022 and the new year 2023, me and the team of General Hospital (General Hospital) of Binh Duong province performed a special surgery for the first time in Vietnam and also extremely rare. available in the world: Temporary transplant of the patient’s severed leg to another part of the body, in a situation where it cannot be reattached immediately following the accident.
The patient was taken to the hospital on New Year’s Eve following being run over by a dump truck, with severe head and chest injuries, along with a severed right leg. Because Binh Duong Provincial General Hospital is located in an industrial zone, labor accidents that cause severed limbs are very common.
In this situation, performing a reattachment of the severed leg meant that the patient had to undergo a heavy and lengthy surgery, resulting in massive blood loss, with high risks of coagulopathy. , multi-organ failure and life-threatening. Such a life challenge will of course never be the solution we doctors choose.
But if not reattached, the severed leg without blood supply will necrosis and there is no way to preserve it for many hours, which means that the patient will lose the leg. After consultation, we decided to temporarily transplant the severed right leg into the patient’s left leg, wait for the patient’s health condition to improve, as well as the amputated part of the right leg to recover. perform another re-attachment surgery. This technique allows doctors to shorten the surgery time for critically ill patients, both to ensure patient safety and to help keep the severed leg from becoming necrotic.
Temporary graft image of the severed right leg to the patient’s left leg (Image: BSCC)
This technique is quite complicated, because it is necessary to perform a complete vascular transplant for that leg part in another place on the body to ensure the part for it to live, and then to have to transfer muscles and switch blood vessels in the other part of the body. The stump being severed to reattach it is quite a feat. But it gives doctors more time to take care of the wounds, fight infections, regenerate the necessary skin and muscle tissue and blood vessels, so that the possibility of successful grafting is higher, the limb is grafted. ensure better functional recovery. But we still decided to choose this solution because of the patient’s wishes, as well as considering the feasibility of the surgery. As a doctor, there is no greater desire than to keep patients healthy, for for many of them it is not just a severed hand or leg, it is a the story of a piece of rice and clothes later.
After 5.5 hours, the surgery was successful, and the new year has passed. At 4 a.m., I walked from the hospital to my rented house following a long operation – the road that when I went was 2022, when I returned it was 2023. Although I was so tired following the operation that I might not even smile a smile. smile, but my heart is happy. Looking at the lampposts running along the alley, I also feel that I have a companion, not alone. I am happy because I bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year with a medical achievement that can help many patients in the future.
For a surgery like this, a surgeon like me will be paid 125 to 240 thousand dong by the hospital. The difficulties of low income of medical staff have been reflected too much in the media over the past time. As a doctor who has worked for many years, I am lucky because I still basically consider it enough to live on. But I know many doctors who have just graduated from my hospital, whose income is only equal to or slightly higher than that of workers. That is not to mention the unprecedented difficulties that the medical industry will face in 2022.
