science · 07 July 1965 · 59 years ago
In 1965, the first successful surgery to replant a completely amputated thumb was accomplished by Shigeo Komatsu and Susumi Tamai. They used a surgical microscope to operate on a 28-yr-old man's thumb, which had been severed at the metacarpophalangeal level. They published their work in the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 1968. The surgeons had been working since 1959, with “many failures.” The way had been paved by Jacobson and Suarez who, in 1960, achieved anastomoses of 1mm diam. vessels under an operating microscope. A medical writer suggested the availability of 8/0 monofilament suture was the key to success by Komatsu and Tamai.. By 1992, they had replanted 331 digits at the Orthopaedic Clinic of Nara Medical University Hospital, Kashihara, Japan.
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