That is a real 400 lb crocodile. And someone's real coarsely amputated arm. The crocodile is a resident of the Shoushan zoo, in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, and the arm belongs to Chang Po-yu, the zoo's veterinarian.
The croc doc had not recognized that his patient was not completely anesthicized and when he tried to retreive a syringe from the reptile's hide - whammo. The vet was rushed to the OR table and his arm was clode behind, as shown in this fairly intense video.
After six hours of surgery, the skilled Taipei surgeons successfully reattached the Po-yu's arm. It is really cases like these that make you proud to be a physician. That doctors and emergency staff can work so efficiently and effectively togther as to reconnect a man's arm that was torn off by a friggin aligator (crocodile, whatever) - it is amazing!
Bacterial contamination of the arm has got to be a serious concern as it was recently sitting in the mouth of a huge-toothed beast that routinely eats raw flesh and wades around about 3 inches off the ground. Also, the life span of nervous and vascular tissue exposed to the air (and that mouth) cannot be very long.
That is not even taking into consideration the massive surgical cahones you have to have even to be able to re-anastamose shredded arteries and veins and muscle and bone and skin!! How great are those guys!
I think we should start efforting for an interview with these surgeons to ask them exactly how they performed this medical feat. We're on it. Does anyone know Taiwanese, though?
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