Frank Reyes burned his hand badly while changing a tire on a trailer this past spring. The jack slipped and his hand was pinned against a fender that had been baking in 100 degree temperatures. It took half an hour for help to arrive and by that time the hot metal had burned through skin and tendons. Infection set in and surgeons feared that the usual type of skin graft would not work.
But Reyes's hand was saved in an unusual procedure at Houston Methodist Hospital. Surgeons made a pocket in the skin of his abdomen and tucked his hand into the pocket. He spent 3 weeks like that, which allowed the abdominal skin to heal to his hand and form a new blood supply.
The abdominal skin attached successfully to the hand and formed new blood vessels. Doctors have now cut Reyes's hand free of its temporary home and shaped some of the abdominal tissue and skin to cover it the back of this hand. Reyes hopes for near-full use of the hand he almost lost.
Surgeries like this-temporarily attaching one body part to another or tucking it under skin-are are uncommon, but they are not new. Similar procedures were performed in ancient India and in Renaissance Italy.
The plastic surgeon in this case, Dr. Anthony Echo, plastic surgeon at Houston Methodist, thought of this type of procedure when he saw Reyes's hand. The damage was down to the bone. Doctors had already tried a conservative approach to the injury-just keeping it clean and bandaged-but infection set it and most of his index finger had to be amputated. Without the abdominal tucking procedure, Reyes's might have lost all the fingers on that hand.
Reyes is a retired cattle ranch worker and school bus driver who lives in Missouri City, TX. At age 87, he calls himself an outdoors person who does not like to be cooped up. He wants to get back to raising cattle and riding horses.
