The birth of a baby brings joy and hope to a family, but not all babies are “perfect” at birth. For these babies who are not “perfect”, their health condition will often hold the hearts of the whole family. Not long ago, I saw a baby from Shenzhen. She was diagnosed with focal dermal dysplasia and syndactyly at birth. In order to see a doctor, the child’s mother and father took her to all the major hospitals in Shenzhen, but each time they were not particularly satisfied with the results of the consultation. As a parent, I could understand their feelings after learning their intention. However, from the doctor’s point of view, this situation of the child is really complicated. Generally speaking, in the process of finger splitting, the opposite edge of the web of the finger will usually have skin soft tissue defects, in order to avoid skin grafting, mostly through the design of flaps to cover the trauma, but for some complex syndactyly that can not be repaired by flaps, skin grafting is still needed. In this baby’s case, the amount of dermis on her tummy was relatively small and could not be removed, which is why the parents brought their baby to our clinic. Do I need to separate my syndactyly? In fact, for this type of children, I personally recommend that they use surgical methods to release their syndactyly, which is good for the appearance and functional development of the fingers. What is the appropriate age for finger-tie? Generally speaking, as long as your baby is healthy, you can consider finger splitting surgery when he is about 6 months old. There are 2 main reasons for choosing this stage for surgery: 1. The younger the baby is, the smaller the skin defect that occurs after finger splitting. As the baby is young, the extent of skin defect that occurs after finger splitting will be smaller, and the baby will be able to recover more quickly after the surgery. Baby’s self-consciousness is not strong At around 6 months old, babies are not yet self-conscious and do not have enough knowledge about the use of their hands. Early surgery will not have a great impact on the baby’s ability to learn how to use his/her hands in the future. Does syndactyly have to be implanted? Whether a skin graft is needed depends on the type of syndactyly and the type of surgery. Generally speaking, before the syndactyly surgery, the surgeon will carefully evaluate the affected hand area and choose the appropriate surgical plan. In general, the surgeon will carefully evaluate the affected hand area and choose the appropriate surgical plan, preferably avoiding the need for a skin graft by designing a dorsal metacarpal flap or an adjacent dorsal flap. For some complicated completely syndactyly, there is still a part of the defect that cannot be repaired by a flap, so skin grafting is still needed to achieve the purpose of the surgery. However, with the development of technology, there is now a no-implant technique that can replace the traditional implant method. The advantages of this method are that it does not require a skin graft and the regenerated skin looks very much like normal skin, which is why the mother brought her baby to our clinic for a consultation. In conclusion, for babies with syndactyly, choosing the appropriate surgical method to separate the fingers together earlier is beneficial to the growth and development of the fingers and the establishment of hand function in the later stage of life.