Sichuan boy’s thumb suspended at birth, finally reattached in Wuhan more than a decade later

This child came to me at the end of last year, accompanied by his parents, from Sichuan. As soon as the child was born, his right thumb was different from others, the whole thumb was hanging down, like a meatball tied to the hand, and when the wrist moved, it would swing with the amplitude of the hand, which looked very “weird”. According to the child himself, he was in the first grade when there was even a classmate was scared of its thumb cried, he was in a particularly uncomfortable mood, since then in front of people try to hide their hands, even in the summer to wear long sleeves, and he himself is very afraid of heat, so very afraid of summer. The child is 13 years old, and his thumb has been suspended for 13 years, and his parents have been taking him to various hospitals every summer since he can remember. Some doctors said that the thumb could not be preserved and had to be cut, while others said that the bone had to be transplanted from the foot to connect it, but they were all rejected by his parents, who said that medical technology was becoming more and more advanced and that sooner or later they would be able to find a way to preserve the five fingers without hurting the foot. The parents later learned about hemimelia bone grafting on the Internet and brought the child here before he could wait for summer vacation. The child’s suspended bunion, also known as floating bunion, is a more severe form of thumb dysplasia, which in the past was corrected by means of thumbing or metatarsal reconstruction, the two options mentioned above. But they also bring some disadvantages while correcting bunions, either only four fingers after surgery or a lot of damage to the foot. Therefore, we now use the hemi-metacarpal bone graft reconstruction technique for the treatment of floating bunions. The hemi-metacarpal bone grafting technique is used to reconstruct the first metacarpal bone from the second metacarpal bone of the affected hand, which not only preserves the child’s thumb after surgery, but also does not harm other parts of the child’s body. The child’s surgery is now complete, and when he came for a review some time ago, he could already write his name with his right hand, and the overall progress is very good, both in appearance and function.