Plastic Surgery on Boy with 31 Digits

Plastic Surgery Science Comments (1)

It sounds like something you might see in a supermarket tabloid – Boy Has 31 Fingers and Toes! – but it actually happened in China.

Between the lines, the story also tells how plastic surgeons often use their many extra years of surgical training (five to seven) after getting their M.D. degree to bring normalcy back to a person’s life.

The six-year-old Chinese lad — whose name was not released — had extra, fused fingers on each hand while each foot had eight separate toes. Medical experts say the rare deformity resulted from a gene mutation and is being identified as central polydactyly.

Born with the condition in Shenyang, China, news reports say the child was perfectly okay with his appearance — until he started school.

Then, the teasing and harassments from his schoolmates began. After the boy picked up a cruel new nickname, “Monster”,  he gladly agreed to the surgery. The youngster is now healing after reconstructive surgery.

The same thing routinely happens in the United States when a child with large ears starts school; he or she is relentlessly hounded and cruelly teased. Thus, most plastic surgeons advise that such children have otoplasty, also known as ear pinning, before starting school.

If you follow our blog, you would be familiar with quandary that teens and young men find themselves in if they have happen to have the large fleshy breasts known in gynecomastia. (Read our post about male breast reduction surgery.)

Yet another example of how surgeons with extra years of surgical training, testing and certification bring normalcy back to a person’s life happens every May during National Dog Bite Awareness Month. Plastic Surgeons’ organizations team with veterinarians to remind people how to keep very young children safe from dogs.  Children often receive terrible facial bites from dogs and it’s up to plastic surgeons to repair and care for the resulting wounds which often leave scars for many years. (More about plastic surgeons and dog bites.)

Starting about this time each year, organizations of plastic surgeons tell people how to keep their feet away from lawn mowers which cause terrible injuries that plastic surgeons repair. Reconstructive plastic surgery also covers breast reconstruction after cancer, burn cases and even the rare cases in which people have no nose at all.

Rhinoplasty surgeons use cartilage taken from the patient’s own body for a new nose.

admin @ May 3, 2010