UAE: Doctors reattach chef's severed fingers after he accidentally chopped them off

An Indian chef who works at a restaurant in Al Nahda started his workday as he usually does: By cleaning the noodle cutter.

Without realising that the blade was attached to the equipment, Sutharshan Subramaniyan, an expat from Tamil Nadu, sliced off two fingers on his right hand.

"It happened suddenly. All I could see was a splash of blood all over," he said.

Though he was bleeding, it did not occur to him that he had lost his fingers. "I thought it was a deep cut. But my colleagues came and tried to stop the bleeding using ice."

That was when he noticed something unusual. "I realised that my fingers were not there, which was very shocking and horrific," said Subramaniyan, who came to the UAE five months ago.

The 25-year-old chef's colleagues rushed him to the hospital in less than 30 minutes. At Aster Hospital in Al Qusais, Subramaniyan underwent a 12-hour-long complex surgery to reattach his severed fingers.

Dr Rajkumar Ramachandran, a plastic surgeon specialist, said Subramaniyan’s index finger was sliced from the centre, while his middle finger was cut from the tip, making the procedure more complex.

"When the cut is from the tip, we will not be able to join the arteries and veins. But we managed to do it well," he said.

Dr Ramachandran noted that replanting fingers is a complex procedure that takes hours to complete. "In this case, replanting the middle finger was a challenge. We had adopted a digital replant of the fingers. In this procedure, we join the veins, arteries and nerves of the amputated parts to the remaining fingers. This is the critical part of replanting procedures."

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If the veins and arteries aren't joined properly, the fingers will begin decaying after a few days. To avoid clotting in the reattached areas, the doctor prescribed blood thinners.

Subramaniyan was discharged from the hospital after 10 days. "The doctor has told me that it would take around eight to 10 weeks for the wound to dry and the fingers to become properly fixed and normal," he said.

ayaz@khaleejtimes.com

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