Hand on a foot - level 3
Doctors in China have managed to save a man’s severed hand by grafting it onto his ankle.
The 25-year-old patient Xie Wei lost his right hand in a machinery accident at the factory where he works. He went to the hospital seven hours later with his missing limb. Medics said they couldn’t reattach the hand to his arm right away because the tissue would have died before the surgery was complete. Instead, they decided transplanting the hand somewhere else on the patient’s body was the best way to save it.
And then 35 days later, doctors reattached his hand, removing it from his ankle and putting it back where it should be. Speaking to a news agency from hospital, Xie Wei said he was overwhelmed.
“I just thought it was miraculous. I would never have thought that my hand could be saved.”
Xie Wie said his hand still felt numb and it would take months for it to show signs of functioning. The hospital said a great deal of rehabilitation was now needed for the hand to function better than a prosthetic hand.
Difficult words: sever (cut), graft (to attach something to something else where it can grow), limb (arm or leg), tissue (the material forming animals and plants), overwhelmed (amazed), numb (without feeling), prosthetic (man-made limb to replace a missing limb).