Doctor posts on Facebook seeking a girl with limb deformities to perform surgery on.

After examining a young girl named Minh Anh from Binh Thuan province and failing to return for her scheduled appointment, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Anh posted a message on Facebook asking the family to convey his request for surgery. Two hours later, the family received news.

Baby Minh Anh was born with a congenital defect where both her fingers and toes were fused together, leaving her with virtually no fingers or toes. She once went with a charity group to Saigon ITO Hospital for examination.Having treated hundreds of children with hand deformities, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Anh, Head of the Department of Microsurgery and Plastic Surgery, found this particular case of fused fingers to be very special.The baby's five fingers are fused together, not just the soft tissue like in other pediatric patients, but the bones are also fused, making the surgery very complex. The longer we wait, the more disadvantageous it will be, so the baby needs early intervention. The cost of the first surgery will be approximately over 40 million VND.

Months passed after that examination, and the little girl remained missing, despite the doctor's persistent efforts to find her.Fear that the family might be hesitant due to the high cost and unable to afford the surgery.For the child, Dr. Xuan Anh tried to contact the family. He posted a missing person notice on his personal page, asking the online community to spread the word to the child's acquaintances and relatives.Dr. Anh proactively offered to perform the surgery for free so that the child could have the surgery sooner, recover quickly, and return to school with her friends. Just under two hours after sharing the information on Facebook, the doctor and the family connected. Minh Anh is expected to travel to Ho Chi Minh City next week for the planned surgery.

Still speaking with her Quang Binh accent after 14 years of living and working in Binh Thuan, Pham Thi Loan, the mother, recounted how she fainted upon seeing her daughter Bui Ha Minh Anh's incomplete physical form when she was born in 2009. Both of the baby's hands and feet were severely deformed, almost completely lacking fingers. In her early years, suffering from multiple deformities, including a cleft palate and bulging eyes, the little girl was thin and dark-skinned, like an old woman. Loan and her husband, both construction workers, sought help from charitable organizations for treatment, but luck remained elusive for their unfortunate daughter.

A birth defect caused Minh Anh many difficulties in her schooling. Photo: XA

Despite always striving to be able to hold a spoon and eat rice independently, Minh Anh has often burst into tears out of helplessness. "Many times, she would ask in pain why I gave birth to her like this, why I didn't just use a scalpel to cure her illness," the 40-year-old mother choked up.Minh Anh is Loan's third daughter. Her two older brothers are in 6th and 8th grade this year.

During her school years, Minh Anh eagerly went to school and tried very hard for fear of not being accepted into the class. Despite her difficulty walking, and the sweat soaking her notebooks every time she gripped a pen between her fingers, she never gave up. She could manage simple words, but some compound words always posed a challenge during her writing practice.

The mother said that on previous check-ups, the child was very afraid of the doctor and begged her mother to only operate on one hand so she could hold a pen. After meeting Dr. Xuan Anh and receiving advice, the child was very happy. On the way home, she kept hugging and kissing her parents, excitedly saying that she was about to have surgery so she could go to school."When we got home, we had to wait quite a long time, and my child kept anxiously asking me about it. I had to comfort her and tell her to be patient while I earned money. When the doctor contacted us again, she's been counting down the days until next week for the surgery," Ms. Loan shared.

Not only her hands but also her toes are fused together, making it difficult for Minh Anh to walk. Photo: XA

According to the doctor, this surgery will separate the thumbs and little fingers of both hands of the child. The surgery is expected to take about 3 hours. The recovery time is 3-4 weeks. Minh Anh can go to school and practice holding a pen 3 weeks after the surgery. The complexity of the surgery lies in the possibility of anatomical abnormalities in the blood vessels supplying the fingers. Therefore, meticulous searching and dissection are necessary to protect the blood vessels nourishing the fingers during separation, as the risk of necrosis after separation is very high.

"For this first surgery, if the costs covered by charities and donors are not enough, we will try to raise additional funds. The baby..."It still needs a few more surgeries to perfect everything.", shared Doctor Xuan Anh.

According to VNE