While working on a tractor, a woman’s hair got caught in a gear, tearing off her entire scalp. Fortunately, doctors were able to sew her hair back together in an unusual surgical procedure. Warning: some images in this article may be disturbing.
A 60-year-old woman experienced a nightmare that can happen to people who work in contact with powerful machinery: getting her hair (or a limb) caught in a gear. This Danish woman saw her entire scalp, eyebrowseyebrows at the back of her head, being torn out when her hair got caught in a drill press while she was repairing her tractor. The tension was so intense that half of her left ear was also blown off. Despite the violence of the accident, the victim managed to call an ambulance. She was then taken care of by the medical team at Odense University Hospital who would work miracles.
A complete removal of the scalp
In the ambulance, the victim is calm and his vital signs are stable despite his bare, bloody skull. Emergency workers relieve his pain with two injections of fentanyl. They also collect his scalp and store it in a bag in plasticplastic surrounded by ice cubes to prolong its durationduration of life. ” I think the magnitude of the trauma combined with the fact that I felt only a minimal amount of pain is surreal to me. “, says the patient several months after her accident.
Arriving at the hospital, the doctors performed a series of tests to ensure that the violence of the trauma had not caused damage to the inside of her skull. Fortunately, no fractures or hemorrhages were detected. She was then entrusted to cosmetic surgeons who would reattach her scalp to her skull during a micro-surgery operation.surgerysurgery which will last 6 hours.
A successful surgical operation
Her scalp is cleaned and prepared for implantation; the hair is cut short to make it easier for the doctors to work. The first challenge is to reconnect the main blood vessels from the skull to the scalp. The left temporal vein and then the right are connected with sutures of just over a millimeter and, after an adjustment on the left side, blood flow is restored between the two. The doctors must now suture the entire scalp in place, from the eyebrows to the torn ear to the back of the skull using 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, there are almost no marks to show the trauma the Danish woman suffered. She can move her eyebrows and her hair is growing normally. Alopecia is a common and dreaded consequence of scalp avulsion victims, a rare but common occurrence among women who tend to have longer hair than men. The Danish doctors assume that their patient has suffered one of the most severe scalp avulsions reported in the medical literature. Five months post-surgery, her hair is growing back normally, and by six months, she is beginning to regain sensation in her scalp as neurological connections take longer to re-establish.
” My hair is slowly growing back, which is helping me regain the appearance I had before my accident. My hair completely covers my damaged left ear. In addition, I am starting to regain sensation in my scalp. It is improving week by week. This progress gives me a lot of hope for the future. “, concludes the patient.
