A team of surgeons performed, for the first time in Romania, an operation to replace a necrotic bone (no dead tissue) of the hand with a state-of-the-art pyrocarbon prosthesis. The patient is a 21-year-old man who was suffering from necrosis of the crescent bone, located at the wrist. He was diagnosed with this condition about a year and a half ago, but presented to the clinic recently, when the necrosis was already at a fairly advanced stage.
Previously, the patient went to several clinics in England, where he was offered the option of a silicone implant (a product of poorer quality compared to the latest generation pyrocarbon prosthesis, produced in the USA).
Due to an abnormal anatomical conformation of the bones of the young man’s forearm, the crescent bone was, over time, subjected to additional pressure, which led to a change in shape, loss of vascularity and necrosis.
The young man began to have great pain, every day. Besides, he couldn’t use his hand anymore. Doctors said that if he had postponed the operation, he risked developing osteoarthritis and would have required much more invasive surgery, which involved excision of both the crescent bone and neighboring bones and shortening of the hand or total blockage of the joint.
“The intervention had a high degree of complexity, given the precision with which it must be performed, but due to the solid training of the medical team, it was successfully completed. Currently, the patient is in good condition and the recovery period will begin, which will last around two months “, said Dr. Iulian-Daniel Vîlcioiu, the patient’s attending physician, from the Zetta Clinic.
According to specialists, the operation consisted of excision of the necrotic bone at the wrist, preparation of neighboring bones for prosthesis, harvesting of a tendon graft and fixing the prosthesis in anatomical position using the tenod graft and titanium and gore-tex devices. According to the representatives of the company Enlife Solutions, the distributor of Integra pyrocarbon prostheses, this is the first order of such an implant in Romania.
The multidisciplinary orthoplastic team consisted of Dr. Dragoș Zamfirescu, primary doctor of plastic surgery, aesthetics and reconstructive microsurgery, Dr. Iulian-Daniel Vîlcioiu, orthopedic and traumatology specialist, and Dr. Irina Luca, anesthesiologist.
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