Doctors surgically redevelop thumb of newborn baby

New Delhi: Doctors at city hospital surgically constructed the thumb of a newborn. According to doctors, the newborn baby Ayushi (name changed) had a small underdeveloped thumb in her right hand, which meant that she would have to struggle with even some of the basic chores like holding a pencil, tuck the button or tie shoe lace.

Ayushi suffered from a rare condition called ‘radial club hand’ with ‘hypo-plastic thumb’ that affects about one in every one lakh births.

Doctors said that both the parents were quite worried about their newborn’s future as this birth defect could create problems for their daughter in future and she may not be like a normal kid who can hold, grab or catch anything.

“After a few months of birth, Ayushi tried to pick up objects between her index and middle fingers as she could not use her thumb at all and faced ex-treme difficulty in doing some jobs that came pretty easy to other kids.

Though people do survive without thumbs also, but they are not able to perform the normal activities easily, attracting hu-miliating comments from other kids,” said chairman Orthopedics, PSRI Hospital, Dr P.P. Kotwal. Dr Kotwal decided to reconstruct the thumb from the girl’s index finger using a procedure called as ‘Pollicisation’.

The four hour long surgery involved rotating Ayushi’s index finger, shortening it, placing it where the thumb would normally be and then restoring the finger’s blood vessels and nerves.

Doctors also had to make sure the recreated thumb would be able to develop normally, so that when Ayushi grows up, she wouldn’t be stuck with a baby-sized thumb.

This new thumb reconstructed from index finger would now look like a thumb and also function like one. The surgery has left Ayushi with one thumb and 3 fingers, but many times people don’t notice that one finger is missing.

Moreover, thumb is a very important digit that is essentially required in almost every function of the hand. In these children, the goal is to provide them a functional hand and the ability to do anything that any other child can do.