While working on a tractor, a woman’s hair got caught in a gear, ripping her entire scalp. Fortunately, the doctors managed to sew him up in an extraordinary surgical procedure. Please note that some images in this article may be offensive.
A 60-year-old woman experienced a nightmare that could happen to people who work in contact with powerful machinery: getting her hair (or a limb) caught in a gear. This Danish girl saw her entire scalp, eyebrowseyebrows on the back of the skull, being pulled out as that hair got caught in a drill press while she was fixing her tractor. The tension is so intense that half of his left ear has also been blown off. Despite the violence ofaccidentaccident, the victim manages to call an ambulance. She is then taken care of by the medical team of the university hospital of Odense which will work miracles.
A complete tearing of the scalp
In the ambulance, the victim is calm and his vital signs are stable despite his bare and bloody skull. The emergency physicians relieve her painpain with two injections of fentanyl. They also collect his scalp and keep it in a pocket in plasticplastic surrounded by ice cubes to prolong its durationduration of life. ” I believe the magnitude of the trauma combined with the fact that I only felt a minimal amount of pain is surreal to me. “says the patient several months after her accident.
Arrived at the hospital, the doctors make him pass a series of examination to make sure that the violence of the traumatism did not cause damage inside the cranial box. Fortunately, no fracture or hemorrhage is detected. She is then entrusted to plastic surgeons who will reattach her scalp to her skull during a micro-surgery operation that will last 6 hours.
A successful surgery
Her scalp is cleansed and prepared for implantation; the hair is cut short to facilitate the work of doctors. The first challenge is to reconnect the main blood vessels from the skull to the scalp. The left and then the right temporal vein are closed with sutures of just over a millimeter and, after an adjustment on the left side, blood circulation is restored between the two. Doctors now have to suture the entire scalp in place, from the eyebrows over the torn ear to the back of the skull with surgical clips and stitches. After six hours of meticulous work, the patient leaves the operating room and five days later, she is already back home!
Five months later, almost no brand can testify to the trauma suffered by the Dane. She manages to move her eyebrows and her hair grows normally. Alopecia is a frequent and dreaded consequence of the victims of a tearing of the scalp, a rare phenomenon but which affects a lot of women who, in general, have longer hair than men. The Danish doctors assume that their patient experienced one of the most severe scalp tears reported in the medical literature. At five months post-op, her hair is growing back normally, and at six months she is beginning to regain sensation in her scalp as the neurological connections take longer to recover.
« My hair is growing slowly which is helping me get back to how I looked before my accident. My hair completely covers my damaged left ear. Also, I am starting to recover sensations on my scalp. It’s getting better week by week. This progress gives me a lot of hope for the future. concludes the patient.
