Triple limb-reattachment fails - boy loses foot
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Terry Vo, the 10-year old Australian boy who had two hands and a foot reattached by surgeons after losing them in an accident, has had to have the foot re-amputated. He will be given a prosthetic foot in its place.The operation to re-attach three limbs was thought to have been a first - but was ultimately unsuccessful, with the foot having died inside, and receiving insufficient blood supply following the surgery to reattach it.
"That would lead to the small muscles in the foot actually constricting, the toes bending over and a deformed .... foot that is sort of clawed over and doesn't have good sensation," said plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love today, on Australia's ABC Radio.
"Even if you can get all of that to survive, he [would be] worse off than having had an amputation."
"What is very disappointing is that for the first two days after [the operation] the foot looked absolutely magnificent," he said.
Terry's hands were healing well, said the surgeon. The prosthetic foot would allow him to walk normally, since his knee was intact.
Sources
[edit]- Australian Associated Press. "Boy to get prosthetic foot" — Australian Associated Press, April 5, 2005
See also
[edit]- "Surgeons reattach boy's three severed limbs" — Wikinews, March 29, 2005