The Regenerative Finger

When a child's fingertip is sliced off or smashed in a car door, most doctors sew up the wound or attempt to reconstruct the digit. But the best treatment for such injuries may be none at all. Writing in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, Dr. Cynthia Illingworth of the Children's Hospital in Sheffield, England, reports that until the child is age eleven or so, a fingertip that is not damaged below the first joint will often regenerate spontaneously if left alone. Thus instead of suturing up smashed or amputated fingertips, Dr. Illingworth and her colleagues merely clean the damaged digit, hold it in position with a sterile splint strip, cover it with a nonstick dressing and a mitten bandage, and then let nature take its course. Illingworth notes, for example, that a three-year-old girl whose fingertip was treated surgically following amputation in an accident was left with a permanently deformed finger. But a five-year-old who received the Sheffield nontreatment after a similar injury grew a new fingertip --complete with nail--in just three months. Here it is:

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