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Surgeons are confident that a Hamilton toddler will get back full use of her right thumb severed when a toy box lid slammed shut on it.
Nineteen-month-old Ebony Finlay was playing at a friend's house when the accident happened on October 10.
Her mother Leanne Finlay said she heard Ebony screaming and when she lifted the toy box lid she was met by the gruesome sight.
"I thought she had jammed her finger and I lifted up the lid and basically her thumb was chopped completely off," she told the Waikato Times.
Ebony was taken to Waikato Hospital where the thumb was reattached during four hours of surgery.
Plastic surgeon Dr Zachary Moaveni told the paper that, despite the challenge of operating on such a tiny thumb, the operation went amazingly well.
Because Ebony's veins were too small, doctors used an artery in the reattachment. After the surgery leeches helped drain excess blood until blood vessels grew back.
- NZPA
