Floating bunion successfully preserves five fingers|Case 5 Successful thumb relocation after difficult surgery

This child’s case is quite special, his left hand has an extra thumb and his right hand has a floating thumb. According to the mother of the child, the whole family cried after the birth of the child. When she was pregnant, all the tests were done and there were no problems, but after the birth of the child, the doctor told them that the child had an extra thumb on his left hand and the thumb on his right hand was very soft and small. Later tests revealed that the child’s right thumb was severely underdeveloped and basically had no bone support and was a floating thumb. In order for the child not to be ridiculed, the family searched for medical treatment for two years When the child was a full month old, they took the child to the local hospital to consult the doctor, who said that the operation could not be done until the child was three or four years old. The doctor said they could not operate until the child was three or four years old. Although they felt it was a bit late, at least there was hope for recovery, so they planned to wait until then. However, once the child’s sister pushed the child out to play and people were laughing at the child’s hand. In order for the child not to be laughed at when he went to kindergarten in the future, they decided to take him to the doctor again. In two years time, they have traveled all over Hubei Province, large and small hospitals, but also seen a lot of doctors, there is a doctor can be as soon as possible to the child to do surgery, but the way the operation is difficult for them to accept, because the doctor said that the child’s right hand index finger to move to the position of the thumb, to take off the floating thumb, to do the finger bunionization, the left hand multi-finger excision. At the time, the father said that this would be the last resort, but they still wanted to keep their child’s fingers intact as much as possible, so they continued to make inquiries, trying to find ways to preserve their child’s thumb, and then finally found us. The surgical solution seemed to be the best of both worlds, but the surgery was very difficult At the time we met the family, the child was already 2 years old. The parents wanted to keep the child’s right thumb, and we thought it would be a shame to take away the floating thumb. After examining the child, we thought it would be a good idea to transplant the bones of the left digit into the right hand, which lacked metacarpal bone, to rebuild the metacarpal bone and lay the foundation for further functional reconstruction. We gave the parents a proposal that they very much approved of, because firstly, it would correct the digit, and secondly, it would not be necessary to take bones from other parts of the child’s body in order to save the bunion. This surgical plan seemed to have the best of both worlds, but in fact the surgical difficulty was very high, because the bones of this child’s digit were not very intact, and after we took the bones off the finger, we had to, firstly, make sure that it was relatively intact, and secondly, we had to put it into a very suitable position for reconstruction, and not all of the bones of the finger could be transplanted to the finger and survived, and the technique of simply moving another extra finger was not carried out elsewhere at that time. The technique of simply moving another extra finger over was not being done anywhere else at the time, so there was almost no precedent to look at. Nevertheless, we thought that this was still a feasible surgical option for this child, and since we had accumulated many similar deformity corrective surgeries over the years, the safety of the surgery could be well guaranteed, so after communicating with the parents, we decided to carry out the “thumb transfer” surgery for the child as soon as possible. The two surgeries went smoothly and the child recovered satisfactorily. In the first surgery, we removed the extra finger and transplanted the metacarpal bone into the deformed thumb of the right hand, and completed the surgery according to the preoperative design. After the surgery, we found that the child’s metacarpal bone grew well after transplantation, survived well, and healed well. According to our plan, we reconstructed the function of the child’s right thumb in the second surgery. Both surgeries went well and the child recovered very well. What impressed me very much about this child was that he did very well with the functional exercises. Even though he was brought up by his grandmother, she took the post-surgery exercises very seriously and followed our steps to the letter. From pinching small objects to grasping large objects. After several reviews, we found that the child’s functional exercises showed a very good linear growth, and he could screw bottle caps, hold pens and write, including grasping grains of rice with precision. Also, because of the functional recovery, the child’s entire thumb size has grown well, and the length of the grafted metacarpal bone has recovered ideally, and is very close to normal. At the latest follow-up visit, the scars on the child’s left polydactyly were so small that they could hardly be seen without careful examination, and the function and shape of the right hand had also recovered very well, to the satisfaction of the child’s family. Therefore, for children with hand and foot deformities such as floating bunions, as long as parents pay enough attention to them and guide them to do enough functional exercises, the final recovery result will definitely be very good.