Phan Hoang Viet Tung was born in 2015 in Hanoi without a functional thumb on his right hand. His father Phan Hoang Viet Anh was very happy knowing that French hand surgeon Dr Stephane Guero, renowned as “hand magician” for his surgical skills, would have a working trip at FV Hospital late November 2016.
With a hope of a thumb for their son’s right hand, both Anh and his wife La Thi Thu Huong flew more than 1,100 km to Ho Chi Minh City so that their little boy could get surgery from Dr Guero and FV Hospital hand surgeons. “For my son’s sake, I don’t mind the long distance,” the father said.
On November 25, Dr Guero and FV doctor Vu Hoang Lien performed the operation to migrate the little boy’s right index finger to the position of the thumb. The index finger bone is cut and the finger is rotated and replaced at the base of the hand at the usual position of the thumb. The operation succeeded after 2.5 hours, and happy smiling appeared on both doctors’ faces. The father also sounded happy knowing the surgery result.
Dr Lien estimated the new thumb would start to function two months after surgery, and more improvements will follow. She and Dr Guero also two other pollicisation cases during his November 21-26 working trip at FV. In all, Dr Guero examined 32 patients and performed 12 hand surgery and one foot surgery cases.
For all patients who have received surgery from the “hand magician”, FV Hospital provides post-operative care.
Dr Guero uses the Sonopet Ultrasonic Aspirator for complicated surgery. It is a versatile system for the users to effectively address fine bone/hard tissue dissection by coupling torsional oscillation and longitudinal vibration.
Asked why he comes back to Vietnam every year despite of tight schedules in France, the surgeon smiled saying: “Because many hands of Vietnamese kids are waiting for my return.” Dr Guero added before his November visit, he had performed a total of 85 pollicisation cases, and would do this more because others still need pollicisation.
POLLICISATION
It is a hand surgery technique in which a thumb is created from an existing finger. Typically this consists of surgically migrating the index finger to the position of the thumb in patients who are either born without a functional thumb (most common) or in patients who have lost their thumb traumatically and are not amenable to other preferred methods of thumb reconstruction such as toe-to-hand transfers.
Dr. Stephane Guero is one of the world leading surgeons for hand congenital deformities. He has more than 20 years of experience surgery on hand malformations or trauma-related deformities such as syndactyly (when the bone and skin of adjacent digits are fused together, preventing the development of fingers), polydactyly (supernumerary digits) or ectrodactyly (the deficiency or absence of one or more digits) and hand tumours.
His fame as a “hand magician” comes about because Dr Guero not only performs surgery to treat congenital hand deformities in children but also conducts hand reconstructive surgery for adults. He is also famous for plastics surgery.
