CHANGSHA, CHINA — A doctor in Hunan has successfully reattached man’s severed hand after keeping it alive attached to the patient’s leg for a month. The patient, surnamed Zhou, lost his hand in an accident with a spinning blade at the factory where he works. Zhou’s injuries were too severe to reattach the hand straight away. The challenge for doctors then was to find a way to keep Zhou’s hand alive for the month it would take for the nerve endings to repair themselves. Unable to use conventional methods to keep the hand alive, doctor Tang Juyu grafted Zhou’s appendage to his right ankle. This allowed the hand to stay alive for more than a month, before it was reattached in a 10 hour operation. Zhou’s hand has already regained some movement and is expected to improve with rehabilitation.
