Migrant Worker Unhappy with Toe Transplanted Onto His Hand

From QQ:

Migrant worker goes to hospital for help, has toe attached to his hand

Li Zicheng, a migrant worker from Sichuan Province working in Guangdong Province, recently encountered a very big headache: Guangdong Huizhou Huiyang Bone-setting Hospital had cut off one of his toes and then transplanted it to the part of his hand where a finger had been missing. It’s been almost a year and a half, but the hospital still ignores him while relevant governmental departments have yielded no results, unable to take measures against the hospital, unable to deal with medical accidents. This set of photographs was shot on September 23rd, 2011. [click to enlarge]

Li Zicheng arrived in Huiyang District of Huizhou in 2009 to work for a local factory, and had a work accident in April 2010 where an electric saw injured his right thumb. He was promptly sent to Huiyang Bone-setting Hospital.

Li Zicheng explained to this reporter: “After the accident, the factory sent me to the hospital. The hospital doctor tried repeatedly to persuade me to do transplant surgery. The doctor wanted to cut one of my toes off and transplant it onto my hand where my finger was lost, having it become my thumb. At the time, I asked the doctor if my original injured thumb could still be used. The doctor said there were two options. However, in the end, he adopted transplant surgery. At present, the [new] finger has not yet completely recovered, while the foot from which a toe was cut often aches very much. Nobody in this hospital has expressed any concern. To find out the reason, I’ve gone to many other hospitals, and found many medical professors. What I don’t understand the most is that many experts in other hospitals are all saying that there will be grave consequences for my thumb. Huiyang Bone-setting Hospital on the other hand insists that the thumb has recovered. I believe the hospital’s actions and behavior towards patients like me are irresponsible.”

Li Zicheng’s fellow-townsman said: “It’s been more than a year and a half since the accident, and I haven’t seen Li happy since. Everyday he has a long face, and has gone to a lot of places over this medical accident, including hundreds of governmental departments and large hospitals, as well as of course the very hospital that treated his injury. He’s even gone to the Health Bureau over a hundred times. For us migrant workers, we don’t know much about legal and other relevant procedures, but we are humans, humans with blood and muscle. This is clearly a medical mistake/malpractice, so why doesn’t the hospital admit it?”

During the interview, this reporter saw in the Forensic Opinion by The Judicial Expertise Center of Guangdong Province (license number: 4410101) that any lingering problems with Li Zicheng’s thumb reconstruction is directly related to the surgery, constituting Medical Malpractices (level 4), because the problem is fundamentally caused by the medical factors in the surgery.

According to the hospital: “We have connections and will only compensate 20,000 [RMB], [the patient] can file a lawsuit in court.”

Comments from QQ:

腾讯银川市网友 淡出￡味道

Have the doctors gotten to the point where they can’t even tell the difference between hands and feet? What a tragedy!!!

腾讯网友 cain

Strongly recommended that the doctor transplant his buttocks onto his head!

腾讯舟山市网友 尼玛勒＂彼德

Yesterday I saw a post called “why do patients want to hack doctors to death?”… The author [of that post] seemed to not understand. If you really don’t understand, then come look at these photographs. I trust this will give you a very good answer.

腾讯大连市网友 若尘

What is going on? Yesterday morning I saw a piece of news that a man went a hospital to have a B-mode ultrasound. On the diagnosis was written: the uterus is normal. Is there a bottom line for the degrading work ethics/morals of doctors?

腾讯郑州市网友 财/sun神

Speechless! Does it make any sense to do this kind of surgery? What was once one disabled part of the body has now become two disabled parts. What a cheat!

腾讯绍兴市网友 如鱼得水

Fuck! A bunch of ignorant people who don’t know medicine sowing discord. If a finger is injured and lost, the only way to keep the function of that finger is to cut off one of the patient’s toes and transplant it to where the finger was. This is a medical common sense. The aim is to let the thumb of the patient perform full function. It’s not about being unable to distinguish fingers from toes. Our country could perform transplantation/reconstruction of severed digits as early as the 1960s, and our toe-to-finger transplant surgery at the time was amongst the best in the world. If you don’t have the original finger that was broken/severed off, how can you ask the doctor to reattach it? If you don’t transplant, then the thumb would be lost forever. Then you would really lose all function [of the hand]. When you guys express your views, you’d better check relevant documents/information first. Don’t pretend to be angry when you’re actually ignorant.

腾讯鹤岗市网友 野百合

There really are so many problems in China these days! How can there be so many things that infuriate people? People’s hearts have all been eaten by the dogs [lost]… In this materialistic society, people have lost their basic human natures, lost the most basic bottom line of being human!

腾讯网友 煇太勆

I’m thinking, he [the patient] should have agreed to the operation before they made the transplant, right?! Otherwise why would the hospital take the trouble of cutting off a toe to attack it to the hand? What more, before such an operation, it must’ve been required that the patient sign his consent, as the hospital would not assume such responsibility for you.

腾讯哈尔滨市网友 丝雨润生

How can there be a doctor like this? I strongly demand that this godly doctor’s name be made public, so he will never be able to work in this field again.