gms | German Medical Science

14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT)

17.06. - 21.06.2019, Berlin

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Frozen thumb replantation: cases report

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  • presenting/speaker Liwen Hao - Hand and Foot Surgical Center, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China
  • Chao Chen - Hand and Foot Surgical Center, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China
  • Zengtao Wang - Hand and Foot Surgical Center, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China

International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand. International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy. 14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT). Berlin, 17.-21.06.2019. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2020. DocIFSSH19-638

doi: 10.3205/19ifssh0486, urn:nbn:de:0183-19ifssh04862

Published: February 6, 2020

© 2020 Hao et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

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Objectives/Interrogation: There is few report on replantation of a finger which has already been frozen. We report a case of successful replantation and functional recovery of a finger which was frozen before it was brought to us for replantation surgery.

Methods: A 59-year-old woman sustained a traumatic amputation of the right thumb. Her family members mistakenly put the thumb directly in ice (about -20° C), causing the thumb to freeze entirely. When she came to our hospital 5 hours after her injury, we saw that the severed thumb was frozen and was as hard as a stone. We put the thumb in the 5 ° C refrigerator freezer and the ice melt slowly. We replanted the thumb 2 hours later, after the frozen thumb was completely thawed and softened. We anastomosed two superficial dorsal digital veins, the proper radial digital artery of the thumb and the proper digital nerve of both sides.

Results and Conclusions: The thumb survived when the patient was followed up 6 weeks post operation, and the replanted thumb start to function.

Before this case, we replanted a 9-year-old girl's severed thumb. Her parent also mistakenly put the thumb directly in ice, which was also replanted successfully. We conclude based on the present case and our previous case that the frozen severed thumbs can survive after replantation.