It has been a harrowing six months for the 35-year-old West Bengal native, Basudev B, who never imagined he would be able to walk on his own again. Basudev, who works for an IT firm, met with a road accident in July last year and suffered severe injuries to his left leg that required 14 surgeries. Basudev has been staying in Pune’s Undri for the past eight years. On the fateful day he was travelling with his wife on a scooter when a truck hit their vehicle from the rear on Pisoli Road. Severe crush injuries on the left leg could have led to an amputation. However, it was prevented by the doctors at Ruby Hall Clinic, Wanowrie, and six months later Basudev is now able to walk. “My wife fell onto the left side of the road but my scooter was still running and due to the impact of the hit I got dragged for at least 50 feet. My left leg was severely crushed,” he told The Indian Express. Dr Abhishek Ghosh, microvascular surgeon at the Ruby Hall Clinic, recalled that the patient’s left leg was completely crushed and degloved. He along with Dr Ashraf Khan, an orthopaedic surgeon, took him for surgery. “The entire left leg had no blood supply and his popliteal artery (in the knee region and lower leg) was damaged and torn. An amputation was being contemplated as the patient had lost a lot of blood and was in a critical condition,” said Dr Ghosh who added that they decided to give a try to save his leg from being amputated. Basudev was taken for emergency surgery. It was found that there was an entire segment of the artery which was damaged in addition to a major tear of muscles and skin. A vascular bypass was planned and Dr Ghosh decided to take the patient's own veins to reconstruct his damaged artery. “The artery was damaged till the point it goes behind the bone so it was very difficult to join as there was no place to anastomose (to link an artery to another healthy one surgically) the artery. The artery was reconstructed under a microscope and the blood flow was restored and the bleeding was stopped,” Dr Ghosh said. This emergency vascular bypass by Dr Ghosh and his team saved both the life and limb of the patient. Basudev underwent a series of debridements (a procedure for treating a wound in the skin) to remove the crushed tissues which were forming due to the crush injury and infection. “It was a big challenge to control the infection and maintain the patient's parameters,” the doctors recalled. Aggressive antibiotic therapy for control of infection was required. “Eventually the wounds were healthy and covered with a meshed skin graft. As the raw area was very large, the skin grafting was divided into 3 stages, Basudev has recovered and is able to walk again,” Dr Ghosh added.
