Doctors sew up a man's severed arm after a serious domestic accident

A serious domestic accident almost left a 48-year-old man from Blagoevgrad without an arm. The man accidentally falls on a mirror in his home and cuts almost his entire arm, severing the vascular-nerve trunk of the limb. The entire muscle of the right arm with the brachial artery, nerve, and vein was cut. The only thing holding the limb is the bone. He was taken by ambulance to the Blagoevgrad hospital in hemorrhagic shock.

The doctors clamped the brachial artery and referred the patient to a medical facility in Sofia. After being refused hospitalization in two medical facilities in the capital, the man arrived urgently at St. Ekaterina UMBAL, where the team of the Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Clinic took him in in a severely damaged general condition.

On admission to the department, the patient had a large blood loss and was at immediate risk of losing the right upper extremity due to the ischemia of the arm caused by the interruption of the main blood vessel. Within 30 minutes, a team is formed, which brings the injured person to the operating room, supplies the necessary amount of blood and blood products, in order to proceed with a life-saving and limb-preserving operative intervention. Dr. Elitsa Dimitrova's team performs complete reconstruction of the limb - including autovenous bypass of the interrupted artery due to retraction of the same from the trauma, reconstruction of the deep vein, as well as restoration of the integrity of the muscle groups.

The very next day, the man begins rehabilitation to move his arm and regains full range of motion within 5 days.