This is the story of a 23 years old deep sea diver, from the east African island nation of Seychelles. He met with a road traffic accident in March 2016, and sustained fracture of the right thigh bone and a badly contaminated open fracture of the right leg bone.

Life turned upside down:

Due to deficiency of proper and optimum medical care in his small country, the open leg bone fracture was inadequately cleaned and fixed in a substandard way with thin metal wires; whereas the thigh bone fracture can be said to have been “ignored” at best. As a result, within two weeks he ended up with an unsightly, foul smelling and painful leg, a deformed thigh and high grade fever. In view of the infection he was advised by hospitals in Seychelles to get the leg cut off at the knee level. Seeing his joyful career sinking in front of his eyes, Mr. Mark seeked for someone who could save his leg, someone who could tell him that one day he could go back to sea diving again.

At MIOT:

That search led his family to MIOT International. He came to MIOT in April 2016. Taking the situation under control, as a first step, the trauma team subjected him to “wound debridement”, a procedure in which all the infected tissue from his leg including the dead, pus oozing bony pieces were removed and the dangling leg was stabilised in a temporary metal framework known as “Bi-planar External fixator”. Since the focus of infection was removed, fever went off and Mr. Mark’s general condition improved dramatically.

But the treatment was far from over! He was left with a big bony void in the right leg with loss of large amount of soft tissue. The ignored right thigh bone fracture which was uniting in a deformed fashion was not to be forgotten either. In order to give Mr. Mark a normal, optimally functioning leg back, the trauma team got on with him an arduous journey of “Limb reconstruction”.

The 22week procedure:

He was taken for limb reconstruction surgery in a week’s time. The mal-uniting thigh bone was surgically realigned and internally fixed with metal implants, where as the leg bone was put in an “Ílizarov’s Ring external fixator”. A plastic surgery named “Flap Cover” was done to fill the soft tissue void over the right leg. But still a lot of mending remained to be done. At the rate of 1mm per day, the 15cms long bone void was gradually filled up over the next 22 weeks by a method called as “Segmental Bone transport”, while he was encouraged to walk with crutches (non weight bearing) to get his balance and confidence back.

Recovery:

Mr. Mark continued to have the “Ring External fixator” for the next few months allowing the newly formed bone to mature and become strong. Thus the once grotesque looking non-functional leg, which was advised by many to cut off, was reconstructed and functional. 1 and half years following the inception of the treatment he was walking full weight bearing over his reconstructed leg. MIOT trauma team was happy to see Mr. Mark’s smiling underwater pictures posted on social media. They knew their yearlong efforts had bore sweet fruit.

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