Girl with Severe Quake Injury and Infection Treated in Deyang Hospital

July 6, 2008, ChinaNews.Com:

According to a report from People’s Hospital of Deyang, Sichuan Province, today a girl named Chi Yang who was injured during the earthquake in Sichuan on May 12 was successfully operated in the hospital, thereby avoiding amputation and disablement.  A month earlier Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the National People’s Congress, who was inspecting the disaster zone, visited little Chi Yang while she was facing the potential tragedy of being amputated.

Seven-year-old Chi Yang was buried in the rubble after the quake destructed the classroom in her school, Pingtong Elementary School in Pingwu County. Her left leg was crashed by the collapsed concrete and could not move. At that moment Chi Yang’s parents were at home; and the collapsed house killed her mother.  Having dug his wife’s body out of the rubble, Chi Yang’s father rushed to Pingtong Elementary School, only to see that the school buildings had become piles of bricks and concrete. He started to dig into the rubble with bare hands for hours, and finally, with the help from the People’s Liberation Army, he was able to rescue his daughter from the rubble and found that her left leg had a gapping open wound exposing the bones.  Chi Yang was sent to the Hospital of Jiangyou.  Considering her severe injury and lack of electricity after the quake, the doctors recommended amputation. Other injured victims who were sent to the hospital together with Chi Yang were already amputated. Hearing that she would lose her leg, Chi Yang, who has loved singing and dancing since very little, clung to her dad and pled tearfully, “I have lost my mom; I cannot lose my leg because I want to dance when I grow up!” With the help of others, her father carried her in his arms out of Hospital of  Jiangyou and they were driven to People’s Hospital of Deyang.

Having learned about Chi Yang’s situation, experts from multiple departments of the Deyang hospital converged to evaluate her injury, and they concluded that Chi Yang’s left leg was severely wounded with open bone fracture, skin necrosis and dislodging and infection of the wounds, and her whole body had contusion of soft tissues in many areas. Chi Yang underwent debridement immediately followed by cast immobilization, which was conducted by doctors from the Department of Burns and Reconstructive Surgery in the hospital. 

Upon hearing about the stories of little Chi Yang’s brave endurance of the injury, on May 27 Chairman Wu Bangguo visited her at the hospital and learned the details of her injury and treatment. Chairman Wu instructed Dr. Zhao, president of the hospital, and Dr. Li, director of the Department of Burns and Reconstructive Surgery, to try their very best to keep little Chi Yang’s leg so that she could still realize her dream of dancing in the future.  Chairman Wu encouraged Chi Yang to recover well, study hard, care for others, and become a dancer in the future. Lying on the bed, little Chi Yang sung a touching kids song to Chairman Wu and gave him her drawing of the Olympic mascots, or good luck dolls (Fuwa).  

Kept in mind Chairman Wu’s instruction and hopes for little Chi Yang, the doctors evaluated her situation again and decided to treat her by using the regenerative therapy for burns and wounds invented by China’s famous expert in regenerative medicine, Dr. Xu Rongxiang, as well as a new technique brought by Israeli experts called negative pressure wound therapy, and try their best to keep the injured leg and to avoid amputation and disablement.

By using Dr. Xu’s regenerative therapy, coupled with continuous application of negative pressure, the doctors operated on Chi Yang and were thrilled to find that 5 days after the surgery, all of the transplants on Chi Yang’s wound on her left leg survived under the thick layers of gauze. Dr. Li told Chi Yang (and the reporters then present): “The surgery has been very successful; and your leg has been kept.  You should be able to go home after another week of treatment at the hospital and be able to walk after recovery for another month. Half a year later you should be able to dance again.”