Woman's scalp sliced off in accident, Coimbatore doctors stitch it back

COIMBATORE: A 26-year-old woman was brought to the government hospital on Monday in a pool of blood and an exposed skull. One of her attenders also rushed behind them with woman’s scalp and hair.
The woman – Ashwini — who was working at a jewellery manufacturing unit in Selvapuram saw her scalp being sliced off the skull by one of the sharp mechanized threads used to make jewellery.
The doctors at the government hospital managed to do a complex plastic surgery to re-vascularise or restitch her scalp over her head by connecting the remaining blood vessels to the scalp tissue.
It all happened so fast for the Selvapuram resident who was working in a gold manufacturing unit near her house on Monday. Her mid-waist length hair tied in a braid on Monday morning, got caught in the mechanized strings, used in the making of gold chains and necklaces, when she suddenly turned her head after placing some molten gold on the string.
The string peeled off all the five layers of her scalp from her upper eyebrows all the way back to her neck in one shot.
Her colleagues rushed her to the government hospital with her scalp, with the hair still attached to it, which they managed to salvage after the accident.
The patient had already suffered severe blood loss and a systemic shock because of it. The hospital was immediately resuscitated the semi-conscious patient by giving her blood and fluids.
She was rushed into the operation theatre three and half hours after she was brought to the hospital. Doctors realized that around three of her emissary veins, which connect the veins from the scalp to those in the cranium, were still remaining.
“Using those we placed the salvaged scalp, after carefully removing the hair from it, exactly over its existing position. We connected the existing veins with each other which is why it is called revascularisation,” explained plastic surgeon Dr Ashok Boobalan who performed the surgery.
“The other veins will slowly start growing and attaching themselves to each other,” said Dr G Senthilkumar, who was also part of the surgical team.
Doctors said they were lucky that they did not have to use a skin graft from any other part of the body and could use the scalp itself because only the scalp has hair follicles in it.
“This will allow her normal hair to regrow. Other patients who come with this situation and without their scalps, are patched together with skin from the thigh but have to wear a wig for the rest of the lives,” said Dr Boobalan. The surgery was completed in three hours.
The patient, who met the media on Wednesday, is likely to be discharged within a week or so.