From staff reports
Although it might be a year or so from now before it will be known as a successful operation, all indications are that Seth Apel’s surgery on Tuesday at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital went as planned.
Apel, the Knox teenager whose arm was severed and reattached after a farming accident on Nov. 7, 2015, underwent Tuesday’s procedure with hopes that the 14-year-old will regain movement in his right hand and ultimately achieve complete hand function.
Apel lost his arm while he was unloading firewood and his coat sleeve got entangled in a piece of tractor equipment. The rotating machinery tore off his right arm just below the shoulder. He was flown to UPMC’s Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where Dr. Loralei Grunwaldt and her trauma team spent six hours reattaching the arm, while also connecting bones, nerves, veins and arteries.
Tuesday’s procedure involved surgeons taking a nerve from his leg and moving it to his arm. The plan is to let it grow for a year and reassess the progression at that point.