Hand surgery offers boy hope of texting [+audio]

A Northland boy whose hand was wrenched off by a rope may yet be able to tap texts on a mobile phone, after four surgeons made an intricate repair.

"It's looking great so far," one of the doctors, plastic surgeon Murray Beagley, said last night.

Mr Beagley said the hand looked "pink and well perfused" - indicating blood was flowing.

"I would like to think he will be able to do texting."

The right-handed 8-year-old had his right hand severed from just below the thumb to just under the little finger in an accident at a demolition yard on Friday.

Whangarei police said he was there with his father, in a vehicle, and was playing with a piece of rope.

The boy had the rope around his hand as the vehicle drove off and it caught on something, severing his hand.

He was flown by helicopter to Middlemore Hospital in Auckland where he underwent a 13-hour operation involving four surgeons on Saturday to reattach his hand, which had been put on ice overnight.

The thumb and little finger were so badly damaged they were discarded. The remaining three fingers were moved along one, to give the boy an opposing grip between his "thumb" and two fingers.

Dr Beagley said the boy's outlook was "fairly good. If it's all together [this morning] there's no reason he should lose what we've done. I'm hoping he's going to get some sensation and some movement. "He will hopefully hold a pen and cutlery."

If the treatment is successful the boy could look forward to having about half the strength in his grip that he might have had without the accident. He will have further surgery today, to bridge gaps left in nerves, using nerve grafts from a leg.

In a technique Dr Beagley said he had never read of in surgical literature, spare tendons were put in a "tendon bank" under the skin of the boy's abdomen, for likely future use.

Dr Beagley said severed hands were rare, especially such a rough tear, caused by the yank of the rope.

In March, Robert Harkness, from western Bay of Plenty, had two fingers and a thumb reattached at Waikato Hospital after accidentally sawing them and another finger off his left hand while cutting logs.