CHENNAI: As K Shanmugapriya, huddled in her mother’s arms, waves her heavily bandaged hand, her father pauses to take in the scene. The one-and a half year old has just had surgery to correct a congenital hand defect to separate the four fingers of her right hand that were fused together. Her father, Kathiravelu, a science teacher from Villupuram, was one of the lucky parents who approached RIGHTS (Research Institute for General Plastic, Hand and Trauma) Hospital after seeing an advertisement for correcting congenital hand defect. “I was initially shocked when we realised that she had the defect because the doctor didn’t detect it in the scan. But then I heard about the surgery and decided to take the step,” says Kathiravelu, Shanmugapriya’s father. P Anand, another anxious parent, is waiting for the result of the surgery on his three-year-old daughter, Ashristi. “She was not able to move her hand or even eat on her own because her fingers were intertwined. We consulted doctors at a multi-speciality hospital in Coimbatore. But we decided to wait till the right time for the operation,” says Anand, a farmer in Thiruvarur district.Ashristi’s operation was one of the six operations that were taking place at the RIGHTS Hospital as part of the “free surgical camp” on Sunday. The hospital selected 16 patients from low-income families to programme for, out of the 1,000 applications they received. G Balakrishnan, Medical Director at the RIGHTS Hospital, says that it is easier to rehabilitate the children when they are operated on before they are 18 months old. “Children with this defect have either fused fingers or differently placed digits or missing digits. If the child needs to adapt and be able to hold objects, the operation has to be conducted at an early age,” he said. “The child will face difficulty in learning new movements if the parents approach us when the child is above 12 years.” The operations were performed by RIGHT Hospital Trust in Kilpauk. About 120 children with congenital hand differences from all over India have registered at the hospital for the future surgeries. Out of the 16 children, nine were operated upon on Saturday. As part of the camp, a live telecast of the surgery was broadcast to 150 doctors, including post graduate students, at Beverley Hotels, Kilpauk.
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