Overview
- The patient lost a completely severed ear and sustained severe scalp, neck and facial injuries in an April workplace accident in Jinan, Shandong, according to medical reports.
- An initial attempt to repair the scalp failed because local tissue and vessels were too damaged, leading the team at Shandong Provincial Hospital to graft the ear onto the top of her foot in a 10-hour microsurgery.
- The surgeons reconnected blood vessels measuring just 0.2 to 0.3 millimetres, then salvaged the graft after venous reflux by performing manual bloodletting roughly 500 times over five days.
- While the ear was maintained on the foot, skin from the patient’s abdomen was grafted to reconstruct the scalp in preparation for definitive ear reattachment.
- After more than five months of recovery, the team reattached the ear in a six-hour operation reported to have occurred in October, and the patient has since been discharged with minor follow-up procedures planned.