Humans cannot boast impressive regenerative abilities. We are not able to restore lost limbs and organs, even torn out sick teeth do not grow back. Nevertheless, few people know that, having lost the first phalanx of a finger, a person can easily grow it if he does not get to an illiterate doctor. Take a look at the above picture - it's hard to believe that this finger was once cut off the tip.
How medical error helped medicine
Unfortunately, until the beginning of the 70s of the last century, medicine did not know about this curious property of the human body. If a person lost part of a finger, they either closed the wound with a skin flap, or the severed phalanx was sewn microsurgically. In the first case, a stump was formed, and in the second, after the operation, a deformity of the finger appeared due to a scar and tactile sensitivity significantly decreased until it completely disappeared.
Oddly enough, the usual medical error allowed the doctors to comprehend the truth. In 1971, a teenager came to the English surgeon Cynthia Illingworth, who had to amputate the tip of his index finger. Illingworth did not stitch up the wound, but only treated it with an antiseptic and slightly bandaged it. A few months later, the boy's parents called the woman and thanked her for the fact that she completely restored their son's finger, although they did not understand how this was possible: after all, the guy's entire part with the nail was amputated.
Illingworth herself did not understand. When she met her young patient again, she was surprised to find that the teenager had in fact grown the missing part of his finger completely. It was then that the doctor realized that fingertips are easily regenerated in humans. The surgeon stopped interfering with the natural course of things, and by 1974 she had documented 176 cases of regrowth of fingertips in children under 11 years old. Naturally, Illingworth notified her colleagues of her discovery, and very soon the wounds of the loss of the first phalanx of the finger stopped suturing all over the world.
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The new phalanx is no worse than the old
Clinical studies have shown that if a fingertip is lost, it recovers within about 3 months, but this only applies to the upper phalanx. The borderline between complete regrowth and the absence of any regeneration is extremely clear, without an intermediate zone. For example, if a person loses the first phalanx and part of the second, then the missing part does not grow back. But in case of partial loss of the upper phalanx, a competent doctor will amputate the rest of the patient so that the tip of the finger grows as even as possible. Prerequisite: the wound must be open.
A lost fingertip is usually restored with a superior nail, which will grow faster and harder than other nails. Fingerprints remain the same (also a very interesting phenomenon, especially for forensic experts), as does sensitivity. No scar remains. Initially, medicine assumed that only children are capable of such regeneration, but further research has shown that this phenomenon can be observed in people of all ages.