Hand joint replacement is widely practiced in some countries. Kurgan is the first city in Russia to begin performing these operations. Our hand surgeons had training in France, then foreign prostheses were purchased and patients started be treated.
Hand joint replacement can be indicated for neglected fractures and dislocations as well as for rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. These conditions frequently end in disability.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a severe disease and was traced back in ancient people that lived 4500 years B.C. in Latin America.
Its conventional treatment is pain relief and slowing down the disease development. Nowadays, normal motion in finger joints can be obtained using joint replacement techniques. The damaged joints are replaced with implanted ones made of silicon elastomere and their surface has velvet- or polyester grid structure. Due to this feature the implant rapidly grows into bone tissue.
This high technology service is available not only to patients from Kurgan but also from other Russian cities or villages, or foreign nationals.
In the opinion of surgeons, it is one more step forward in treating upper hand pathology and a good reason to open a regional center for hand microsurgery.
Jeweller’s work of Kurgan plastic surgeons
Recently, a unique operation has been carried out at our centre.
A 19-year old girl from Miass (Chelyabinsk oblast) sustained a crush injury at the factory where she worked. Intact were only three fingers on one hand and two on the other. Local doctors had to amputate the crushed segments and the girl remained invalid.
She then was admitted to the Ilizarov centre and had a staged treatment in the left hand. The surgery was performed by the team headed by Natalia Shikhaleva, our microsurgeon. Initially, the doctors were forming the first metacarpal bone surrounded by soft tissue envelope that included a blood-supplied flap harvested from the forearm. The second stage was the second toe transfer to host on the site of the lost first finger.
The outcome of this unique operation was restoration of the left hand shape and function that would have been impossible without microsurgery technique and skillful surgeons’ hands.
Similar operations have been already performed in St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Novokuznetsk, but the Kurgan surgeons are the pioneers in the Ural district. The girl will have some rest and then come for treatment in some months again.
This high technology service is available not only to patients from Kurgan but also from other Russian cities or villages, or foreign nationals. 
