![]() He lives in New York with his wife and three children. Mayerfield is particularly interested in conditions affecting the wrist and peripheral nerves of the arm. He is an assistant professor of surgery at New York Medical College in Valhalla, and an attending surgeon at Hudson Valley Hospital Center and the Westchester Medical Center. Get to a doctor as soon as possible because it’s difficult to restore blood flow to an amputated finger after more than 12 hours.Īri Mayerfield, MD, specializes in hand, upper extremity, and microsurgery. But don’t put the amputated part directly on ice, or you could further damage it! Then gently clean the amputated part with sterile water, cover it in gauze wrap, put it in a watertight bag, and place that bag on ice. If you are in a remote area or missing supplies, splints can be made from virtually any material that will prevent the injured finger, hand, or wrist from moving – tape and a stick for example. Immobilize the hand and wrist with a splint.Cover the wound with a dry, sterile dressing.If you or someone you're with cuts off a finger, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, you should: ![]() Steps to Take if Someone Amputates a Finger Thanks to her parents quick thinking, the microsurgical repairs, wound care, and some therapy, Rachel is now pain-free and enjoying life in the second grade. Her pain during and after the procedure was tolerable – surprisingly, children sometimes have a higher pain tolerance than their adult counterparts. Rachel’s injuries were not severe, but she had fractured some small bones in her fingertips, hurt her nail bed and injured her soft tissue, including a digital nerve. These painful conditions may require further treatment and even additional surgery long after the initial repair is performed. Chronic pain may sometimes result from injuries that involve the small joints, or when the nerves regenerate abnormally. Post-operatively, patients may experience pain as well, which is typical for the severity of this injury. In this procedure, a local anesthetic is injected into the webspace where the finger meets the hand, numbing it before surgery. When fingertip injuries occur, after emergency evaluation, anesthesia is administered, often in the form of a nerve block. Now picture that the entire diameter of that straw is less than 3 millimeters. Except instead of simple sewing, like you would for a tear in your pants, you have to sew circumferentially making sure that 1) the cut ends of the straw are now connected, and 2) fluid can move freely through it. Imagine that you cut a straw in half, and then you had to put it back together. Microsurgery helps surgeons repair the tiny structures inside your hand using specialized tools under high levels of magnification. The technology that allows us to replant severed digits is called microsurgery, which Rachel had. Each finger has many structures: bones, three main tendons, two arteries, two main nerves, multiple veins, soft tissue, skin, and nails – just to name a few! ‘Fixing’ Severed Fingersįingertip amputations like Rachel's can be very complicated to repair because fingers themselves are very intricate. Pain may also result from direct trauma like a bruise or a cut, which can damage the nerves. An example of this would be a subungual hematoma, which is a collection of blood trapped underneath the nail. ![]() Pain with fingertip injuries may be related to the fact that fingers have many small nerves, or it could be causes by increased pressure in an enclosed space that results from injury and inflammation. From slamming your finger in a car door, to cutting yourself in the kitchen, they can really hurt and lead to chronic problems if the situation isn’t handled quickly, as Rachel's parents did. Pain is often the immediate concern when you've injured a finger, and finger injuries can be excruciatingly painful. In order to minimize the consequences of these severe injuries, that's what you should do in an amputation emergency: Why Are Finger Injuries so Painful? They gathered the amputated parts, wrapped them in a wet paper towel, put them inside a plastic bag, and then put that bag on ice. When her mother turned away for a second, Rachel quickly stuck her hand in the drain, cutting and amputating the tips of her index, middle and ring fingers. She thought she saw something drop down the drain. On this particular day, Rachel – just 6 years old – was in the kitchen helping with the dishes. ![]() Rachel Berdichevsky’s precocious nature and natural curiosity tended to land her in the middle of every event in the house.
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