Palmo Anest

Puasa month associated injury

Well, it's Rhamadan again and wish all my muslim friends selamat berpuasa.

Today, I'll present to you what I called Puasa month associated injury. Every year, we'd seen this type of injury during puasa month over and over again. Yesterday, we had 2 such cases in back to back.

Crush injury of hands by sugar cane machine.

Many peoples are making extra money during the Rhamadan by selling foods in make-shift stalls. Sugar cane juice is one of the favorite.

The 1st case was a young school boy helping his father at the stall. His hand and fingers should be able to function normally again later.



Since he is just a young boy and it's late at night, I anaesthetised him with GA and a LMA.

The next case wasn't that fortunate. He is a middle age man. Take a look at his x-ray.



I'm not putting up the hand photo affraid some of u guys out there might not drink sugar cane juice anymore.

I called him to OT early and gave him a brachial plexus block with the surgeon 'fixing' the kid up. When the proceed with his case, I gave him Midazolam for sedation. I kept him quite sedated, he don't have any erotic dreams. He must be a holy man too, in between his snooring, only words that we heard from him was some citation of Prayers.

I was worried was he in pain? But he wasn't. This morning when I see him in the ward, ask him does he aware of what's going on in OT? He said he was only about 20% conscious during the surgery, on and off he can hear us talking but he was not in pain.

I do wish him well, hope he can learn to use his 'new' hand with only his thumb and palm left.

posted by LT @ 11:38 PM