Man surgically replaces thumb with toe, after an encounter with a bull cuts his thumb

Thumb replaces Toe

Zac Mitchell, 20 who was working on a remote cattle station in Western Australia state got his right thumbs removed by a bull. The bull kicked his hand into a fence which removed his right thumbs.
The Australian man decided to remove his toe from his leg through surgery and transfer the toes to his hand in order to replace the missing thumbs.

“My thumb was still hanging on the rail there when I got up off the ground,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“My boss looked down and saw the blood and asked me what was bleeding. I had a look at my hand and figured out pretty quick (that the thumb had been severed).”

Immediately after the accident occurred, Mitchell fellow workers preserved his thumbs, putting it in the esky (cooler) with some ice.

Mitchell replaces thumbs with his toes

Mitchell was moved to Sydney Hospital’s specialist hand unit, where doctors had opted to replace his thumbs with his toes. He underwent an eight hours surgery.

“To recreate a thumb you can just use skin and bone, but that doesn’t work so well, so really the toe is just the best option by far — when it works well,” plastic surgeon Sean Nicklin, who performed the operation, told AFP Friday.

Nicklin said he carries out procedures using skin grafts from the toe to reconstruct fingers or thumbs every couple of years, but to remove and transplant the entire toe is “pretty unusual”.

He said that the benefits of recreating a new thumb outweigh the downside of losing the toe,

Nicklin said, Mitchell will receive ongoing hand therapy and is expected to have feeling in his new thumb after about a year,

He added that the procedure had a success rate of over 95 percent.

Mr Mitchell's mum, Karen, said he was making a good recovery, she said "Two weeks since the operation his walking is almost back to normal."

Doctors say Mr Mitchell should eventually be able to return to his hobby of bull riding.