Injury in Iowa - Leeches score another win.

When Eric Poore looked at his finger, there wasn’t much left. Wedding ring smashed, skin, muscle and blood vessels stripped away... nothing but bare bone and the tendons holding the mangled mass together. Paramedics snipped off Eric’s gold wedding band and rushed him to the hospital. Fully four trauma centers declined to treat Poore’s poor finger until Greg Yanish rushed to fix it some hours later. Yanish describes the blood flow in a delicately reattached finger “like the drain in the bathtub is slow, but the faucet is on full blast”. Once more, leeches to the rescue! Application of several (prob. H. verbana) to the reconstructed finger both immediately and over several days and it looks like Eric Poore will get to keep his finger. (As an aside... my EMT friends remind me this is an excellent argument against titanium wedding bands... can’t be snipped off). Here's the full article from the Des Moines Register.