Can you reattach a hand

In many cases, plastic surgery, performed together with orthopedic and vascular surgery, can restore substantial function to severely injured limbs.

Traumatic injuries can completely sever connections between a finger and hand or a hand and wrist. These types of injuries are serious and are considered surgical emergencies. To prevent tissue loss, surgeons must restore blood flow to the amputated body part within hours of the injury.

What Is Limb Replantation? By Name By Location. Update Search. In some cases, this option will give you a better and faster recovery than a replant. Use of the replanted part depends partially on re-growth of two types of nerves: sensory nerves that let you feel and motor nerves that tell your muscles to move. Nerves grow about an inch per month. The number of inches from the injury to the tip of a finger gives the minimum number of months after which the patient may be able to feel something with that fingertip.

For replant patients Physical therapy and temporary bracing are important to the recovery process. From the beginning, braces are used to protect the newly repaired tendons but allow the patient to move the replanted part. Therapy with limited motion helps keep joints from getting stiff, helps keep muscles mobile, and helps keep scar tissue to a minimum. Even after you have recovered, you may find that you cannot do everything you wish to do. Tailor-made devices may help many patients perform special activities or hobbies.

Talk to your physician or therapist to find out more about such devices. Many replant patients are able to return to the jobs they held before the injury. When this is not possible, patients can seek assistance in selecting a new type of work. For amputees If you have completed an amputation, therapy and rehabilitation also play a large part in recovery.

For the missing part, a prosthesis may be worn a device that substitutes for a missing part of the body. Emotional recovery Replantation or amputation can affect your emotional life as well as your body. When your bandages are removed and you see the replanted or amputated part for the first time, you may feel shock, grief, anger, disbelief or disappointment because the body part does not look like it did before. These feelings are common. Sometimes, patients' fingers start dying again after surgery and require urgent repeat surgery to fix whatever problem is occurring.

Therapy, therapy, therapy. Fingers love to get stiff after even small injuries, let alone having been amputated from the body. The bone needs to heal. The tendons get sticky. The nerves take a while to recover and give sensation back. All of the facets of recovery from a finger replantation surgery require expert hand specific therapists to work with patients diligently for maximizing finger function. At The Hand Center, we have an expert staff of therapists that work hand-in-hand with the physicians, physician assistants, and the patients so everyone is together through the recovery journey.

Finger replantation surgery is the most challenging surgery that hand surgeons can perform, and not all hand surgeons perform those surgeries. At the same time, this can be the most rewarding surgery we perform. I love this operation and love the opportunity to evaluate patients who unfortunately have had an amputation to finger s so together we can make the appropriate decision for their life.

At The Hand Center, we have the experience and the desire to take care of these complex injuries.