Woman's Ear Reattached with Help of Leeches

[Buster's Uncle]

Woman's Ear Reattached with Help of Leeches
LiveScience.com
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer  April 16, 2014 5:06 PM



A before, during and after look at surgery to reattach the ear of a 19-year-old woman who had it torn off during a pit bull attack. Leeches drained blood from the ear while the organ regrew its own veins.



A 19-year-old woman who lost her ear to a dog attack got it back with the help of a few leeches.

A pit bull mauling left the 19-year-old with a small laceration on her arm and her left ear entirely torn off, with a stud earring still in place. While plastic surgeons are trained to reattach severed organs, these reattachments are simplest when the cut is clean and sharp — as from a kitchen knife, Dr. Stephen Sullivan, a plastic surgeon at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence who operated on the young woman, told Live Science.

This woman's ear, however, was torn, making the surgery more challenging. Using a microscope and extremely delicate tools, Sullivan and his surgical team found a tiny artery only 0.3 millimeters in diameter and reattached the vessel to the woman's blood supply with three microscopic stiches.


Bring on the leeches

The artery brought fresh blood to the woman's reattached ear, but the surgical team couldn't find a vein to drain blood back to the body. So they turned to another technique: leeches.

In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved these blood-sucking worms for use in medicine.

"The body is very efficient at making new arteries and veins, so the leeches are temporary," Sullivan said. "They act as temporary drainage for the ear while the ear makes its own new veins."

For more than two weeks, the woman recovered in the hospital with leeches attached to her left ear, draining away deoxygenated blood. At first, a leech treatment often alarms patients, Sullivan said, but they often grow to respect the little bloodsuckers for what they can do.

"Nature has worked for a long, long time to make a leech, and we do not have something we've invented as scientists, engineers or doctors that has done better than what nature has done," Sullivan said.


Reattachment and recovery

Over time, the nursing staff weaned the patient off the leeches by waiting longer and longer periods between replacements. Meanwhile, the ear grew its own veins to drain the reattached tissue. Today, the scar is barely visible. Because the attack affected only the patient's outer ear, or pinna, the injuries did not damage her hearing.

Ear reattachment is challenging because of the tiny veins and arteries that feed the area, Sullivan said. Only about 50 successful procedures have been reported in the literature worldwide. Although the surgery was not a matter of life and death for this patient, it will play a major role in her quality of life, Sullivan said.

"Every time she puts her hair back in a ponytail, she is going to do it without even pausing," he said. "You see her now, and you would never know that has happened to her."

The case is reported in the April 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.


http://news.yahoo.com/womans-ear-reattached-help-leeches-210654761.html

[Rusty Edge]

I appreciate modern-day medical leeches and maggots. They don't carry germs, and they can restore circulation or selectively remove dead tissue. It allows parts of you to be saved that otherwise wouldn't. I'd use them if need be. My wife would not.

Another Romulan bites the dust!

[Buster's Uncle]

Have you clicked on it and watched it big?

[Rusty Edge]

Yeah, I did.  It's not pretty, and I am squeamish about blood, and I do very much appreciate you hiding it,  but for a pitbull attack it's a pretty amazing reconstruction.

[Buster's Uncle]

Confused now.

[Rusty Edge]

Let me take another shot at this.

Having been a hog farmer for a couple of decades, I have a fair amount of experience with suturing wounds. They mostly come from bites and hooves. It's the difference between life and death with a torn scalp or a chest wound. Ears aren't vital, and sewing them together is kinda hopless. Lots of times I'd sew a wound, but even when I could prevent infection the skin dried up and left a scar. Lack of circulation.

But that's animals. I see a wounded or scarred human I don't think it's ugly, but  I imagine the pain and the amount of lost blood. I tried to sew myself up from a boar bite once, but I couldn't stand to look at it long enough to finish, so I undid what I started.

In the case of this article, my amazing appreciation for the medical mastery exceeds the ickiness. To look at the last picture, I wouldn't guess that ear had been torn completely off, only partially cut.

Does that clear it up?

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.  But my first response was to your closing line about Romulans biting the dust.

[Rusty Edge]

    

Then my answer should have been, "I forgot I could do that!" I did it originally, but not again until today. Thanks!