At the same time, the arms of two patients sewed again «kleinzeitung.at

The patients had been taken to the hospital almost at the same time around Monday afternoon after an accident at work.

3:49 pm, October 23, 2018

At Linz University Hospital, two patients were sewn at the same time. The media reported on Tuesday. Thus, the operations of the two teams of 20 specialists constituted a medical and logistical challenge.

The patients had been taken to the hospital almost at the same time around Monday afternoon after an accident at work. It was a 70-year-old man from Scheibbs District, Lower Austria, who had completely cut his left forearm with a log splitter, and a 58-year-old woman from Perg District, who was cut with a circular saw to the forearm,

Traumatologist Stefan Froschauer of the University of Linz told ORF: "It is so that patients are ready to be operated and operations can be started in half an hour thanks to the good rescue chain and the excellent organization ". In such cases, this happens every minute because you have to restore the blood supply as quickly as possible.

At first, you had to master a logistical challenge. In order to carry out both operations in parallel, all programmed interventions have been stopped. "The whole program had to take a break," Froschauer told the Upper Austrian News (OÖN) newspaper. Two emergency hand surgical microsurgical teams were used, which then performed both procedures in parallel. In total, about 20 people were involved in the procedures, from anesthesia care to the two surgical teams. "But it was also a little lucky that all participants are concrete, because generally, there are not many of them in service," Froschauer told ORF.

On the technical side, the two interventions represent a challenge of size and patience, explains Froschauer. The operation lasted eight hours with the man, three hours with the woman. According to OÖN, the team involved in the latter did not stop, but supported the colleagues still in activity, so that they too could take short breaks once. Both interventions have been successful from the current point of view. Both patients' arms were well supplied with blood.