Severed Thumb Replaced with Big Toe!
October 31st, 2011
James Byrne, a 29-year-old man from England, accidentally sawed off his thumb. According to Catharine Paddock PhD for Medical News Today, surgeons in the UK have given him a new thumb: replacing it with a toe!
They tried to re-attach the damaged thumb but that didn’t work, so now the surgery team have attached James’s big toe in its place. Plastic Surgeon, Umraz Khan, performed the operation at Frenchay Hospital, a regional micro-surgery center in Bristol. The patient is expected to make a full recovery.
I love these stories. When I was in medical school, one of my professors described this same surgery. I decided right then and there that this was what I wanted to do. While my practice doesn’t present many opportunities for this toe/thumb transfer, I really do enjoy that particular aspect of aesthetic sculpting doing cosmetic surgery.