Severed hands sewn back on two men

Press, 24 January 1984, Page 1

Severed hands sewn back on two men

Surgeons at Burwood Hospital spent 22 hours sewing on the hands of two men injured in separate incidents late last week. There was a break of only seven hours between the two 11-hour operations. Mr Allan Lawson cut off most of his left hand in an industrial accident last Thursday evening. Mr Clinton Hallam completely severed his right hand on Friday afternoon. Mr Hallam, aged 33, an inmate of Rolleston Prison, cut his left leg from knee to hip while sawing timber to make shelves for a prison storeroom. The saw then slipped and sliced through his right arm, between the wrist and elbow.

He might have lost his arm altogether but for the quickwittedness of the storeman and an inmate who were with him when the accident occurred.

One kept his finger on the pressure points to reduce blood loss while the other raced across to the kitchen and dragged back bags of frozen broad beans in which to pack the severed arm. No ice was available.

Mr Hallam said yesterday that he was conscious only of the injury to his leg and did not know that he had amputated his hand until his surgeon, Mr Stewart Sinclair, told him on Saturday morning.

“The only thing that hurt all the way to the hospital was my leg and even when the doctor told me that he had spent 13-odd hours working on my arm I didn’t realise what had been done,” he said. The accident happened at 1 pm. on Friday and Mr Hallam was taken into the operating theatre at 4 p.m. that afternoon. He was not returned to the ward until 6

a.m. the next day — 14 hours later.

Mr Hallam will complete a 2%-year sentence in June. He is right-handed and a motor mechanic by trade, but had an office job lined up pending his release. He is not sure that this will still be possible as he has been told that he will not recover the full use of his hand, but he was in good spirits yesterday, nevertheless.

“It will connect up so that it will look reasonable but, as for regaining the full sense of touch, it will probably never do that,” he said.

Mr Lawson, aged 36, was using a guillotine at Firestone’s steelastic department when the rubber jammed. He tried to free it and the machine kicked into life, slicing through his wrist at an angle and leaving only the little finger of his left hand attached. The accident occurred at 6.15 p.m. on Thursday. He stayed conscious until he was taken to theatre at 10 p.m. that, night. He found the pain bearable probably because he was in a state of shock.

“My workmates looked after me well. One picked up the off-piece and packed it in ice,” he said yesterday. Mr Lawson, who is lefthanded, knows that some impairment is likely, but is “hoping for the best.” He is married with three children. He and Mr Hallam are in different wards and have not yet met, but they intend to get together when they are mobile.

Both are under the care of Mr Sinclair, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, who yesterday chose to underplay the effort which kept him in the operating theatre from 10 p.m. on Thursday to

9 a.m. on Friday and then from 4 p.m. on Friday to 3 a.m. on Saturday. The only comment he would make was that it was not his achievement alone; he was part of a team. A statement was released by the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s information officer, Mr Denis Dwyer. He said that the two incidents had occurred within 18 hours of each other and that in the first a left-handed man had amputated his left hand while, in the second, a right handed man had amputated his right hand.

Both hands had been “replanted” using micro-surgi-cal techniques, but it would take between 12 and 18 months for the muscles and nerves to knit together properly, Mr Dwyer said. Until then the operations, both of which had taken 11 hours, could not be pronounced a complete success, but early signs were encouraging. “Mr Sinclair declares at this stage that the situation is satisfactory. In the case of Mr Lawson, the top of the middle finger had sluggish circulation, but apart from that there are no problems,” Mr Dwyer said.