Michelle Pietersen, Cape Times, Monday 16 August 2016
One moment Bongani Mpange was cutting paper with the industrial guillotine he had been using for nine years, the next he was starting down in horror as his bloody hands detached from the rest of his body.
“I pulled the paper. The blade fell down, cut both my hands and then went up. I screamed and then saw my hands lying there. There was nothing more I could do,” Mpange, 31 said.
The accident occurred just before noon on Thursday at the Da Gama paper factory in Parow industria.
Mpange believed it happened because the machine was “broken”.
He said he guillotine was fitted with a sensor and was designed not to drop if it sensed there was an object there other than paper below it.
“I didn’t think the blade would come down, but it did,” Mpange said.
Moments after his hands had been severed, fellow staff members ran to Mpange’s assistance.
“There was a lot of blood and I was feeling the pain,” Mpange said.
“People working with me fetched my hands and put (them) on ice.
“They tied (my wrists because they were) bleeding too much.”
Mpange’s supervisor called an ambulance, and it arrived about 30 minutes later.
Mpange was taken to the Vincent Pallotti Hospital in Pinelands where two teams of doctors worked for seven hours to re-attach his hands. By about 9:30pm he was wheeled out of the theatre, his hands re-attached, and into the intensive care unit.
But that was not the end of the ordeal for Mphange.
According to Andrew Bruce-Chwatt, a plastic surgeon who was a member of the surgical team, Mpange returned to the theatre on Saturday because of clots in the veins.
“We were not satisfied with the view outflow. The blood was flowing in but not out of his hands,” Bruce-Chwatt said.
With the limited time available to them, the team of four doctors then “reworked” all the severed veins and repaired the nerves and tendons on the backs of the palms of his hands.
During the six-hour operation, the team repaired two arteries in each hand, two veins in one hand and four in the other, using a thread finer than a strand of hair.
Specialise hand surgeon Mike Solomons said it was rare to deal with a case in which both hands were severed.
“It was definitely a first for everyone involved and one of the first (double re-attachment procedures) in South Africa.”
Mpange was under the knife for about 13 hours. Solomons said the operations were difficult and posed challenged for the team, but what had counted in Mpange’s favour was that the cutes were clean.
“We repeated the operation to join his veins. Because of the extent of the trauma there was excessive clotting. His hands swelled up and began bleeding,” said Solomons.
He said the team – including himself, plastic surgeon Alexander Zuhlke, orthopaedic surgeon Ian Koller and microvascular specialist Conrad Pienaar – was hopeful that Mpange’s hands would regain reasonable function.
“It’s still early days.”
Mpange said he was grateful he would be able to use his hands again. “At least I look better now. I’m still young and I have to work because I am the breadwinner.”
Just 24 hours after his second operation, Mpange said he was starting to feel sensation in his hands.
