Baby broken fingures

Hi,
My brother's 16 months old baby had an accident.The baby's left hand fingures(all the four fingures except the thumb) were cut off (to be more specific the top part of the fingures with nails was cutoff)and the doctors basically said they cannot attach the cut portion of fingures back at this stage because the baby is too young for this.
   And currently they(doctors) have perofrmed a surgery to attach the cut portion of the fingure  to the stomach(They basically said the blood flow in the stomach will help the wound heel faster and will also help mold the fingures).
  My question is, what are our options to get the baby back to normal(atleast close to normal).Is there any plastic surgeries available for this ,perhaps in the future when the baby grows to acertain age ? any ideas or suggestions are greatly appreciated.Currently the baby has only the 3/4 of the fingures any ideas that would guide/help us are welcolme.

Thank you very much
Vinod

[geminigirl1963]

I can't specifically say what can be done about a baby's finger/s that have been cut off, but I can relay a similar incident that happened to an ex co-worker of mine.  We worked at a printing company and one day while cleaning a part of the printing press, three of his fingers got caught in the press - his pointer and middle finger were cut off in the same area that you describe (the first joint area including the nail) and his ring finger had an avulsion I believe they called it - where the skin and all the tissue down to the bone were basically stripped away from the bone.

They did the same thing for him that they have done for your nephew - they sewed his injured hand into a flap they had created in his abdomen.  I believe, if I remember correctly, his hand remained there for approximately 3 months and then they did a surgery to release his injured hand from teh abdomen and re-sculpture his fingers.  Of course the two fingers that had been completely amputated no longer had bone at teh first joint area, so they are shorter than his other fingers, but the surgery was considered a success because afterward (and after healing time) he was able to use that hand almost normally.  During the surgery to re-sculpture the fingers on his injured hand, they also did a skin graft onto his abdomen to replace the skin and tissue that had now become a part of his hand - that also healed perfectly fine.

Your nephew is going to have a long road of recovery, but they sure can do amazing things with amputated digits and limbs nowadays.

Like I said, I honestly cannot say what they might do with a child that young, but based on what they did with my co-worker, I'd say they are on the right road.

Best of luck!

[Dr Vinod]

Hello!

What your doctors have done is a plastic surgery procedure called pedicle graft. This will be useful for the fingers which have bone intact and loss of muscle, tendon and other soft tissues. After sufficient soft tissue growth from the abdominal wall the surgeon will remove and reshape the fingers as much as possible.

Once a finger is severed and the plastic surgeon was not able to reattach it within the required time then there is little possibility that in the future the fingers can grow again. Without the phalanges or the internal bones of fingers no plastic surgery can bring back severed fingers to normalcy.

Take care!

[vinod2109]

Thanks gemini girl and Vinod! appreciate your inputs