Burn Contractures

Burns are so much more common in the developing world than they are in America. The majority of rural people in African and in many other countries have no or intermittent electricity, and still cook over open fires. Young children are prone to falling into the fires, whether accidentally or as a result of seiure disorders. Occasionally people here use kerosene or "paraffin" stoves, which are also a major cause of burns.

Burn wounds often require skin grafting, which means shaving a strip of skin from a healthy part of the body, often the thigh, and sewing or stapling it to the burn-affected area. If a burn is severe or not treated early, it may heal with a "contracture," where the skin contracts together, and limited the normal mobility of a joint.

This young 8 year-old boy had two contractures. Here you can see that his knee joint has limited motion, as he is not able to fully extend it due to scar tissue.






His foot also healed with a severe contracture, seen below. In the picture you can see the hand of Dr. Roland Stephens, who is my teacher and mentor here at Karanda. He turned 80 years-old last year and still practices full-time full-spectrum surgery.




On this day we were able to perform a surgery to release these contractures, restoring full mobility to this boy's knee and foot. The foot portion required a small skin graft but should heal well. Very little is more gratifying than restoring function to a portion of the body that was previously limited. Surgeries like this in the U.S. are so rare that they would be done only by a plastic surgeon, but they are in fact fairly simple to do, and there is such a huge need in the developing world. This case is just one illustration of the reasons we are here at Karanda, to learn practical skills through which we can glorify God by taking something diseased and unusable, and making it functional again. What a privilege.