127 - Did You Know Everything You’ve Learned About Surgical Fingertip Amputation Treatment Might Be Wrong? - What I Learned in Medical School

Did you know that your body really regrow a fingertip after it’s been amputated—without surgery or stitches?

In this eye-opening episode, Coach JPMD shares a little-known medical fact that challenges conventional wound care practices. Whether you're a physician, medical student, or just fascinated by the body’s healing potential, you'll discover why sometimes the best treatment… is no treatment at all.

• Discover how and why fingertip regrowth is possible with minimal intervention
• Understand how traditional wound care might be slowing your body’s natural recovery

Hit play to uncover the surprising truth about fingertip regeneration and what it could mean for your practice or recovery approach.

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.418)
Did you know that you can regrow your distal fingertip after an amputation? Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. 

Welcome to another Did You Know episode where we are discussing things that I didn't know and hopefully, and maybe you didn't know in medicine.

And so this is a weekly series that I started last week. And I wanted to introduce something that came up at the dinner table. We were having dinner at our home.

And for some reason it came up that I asked my kids if they knew that you can regrow your fingertip after an amputation. And they're like, no, you can't. said, well, yeah, you can. Lizards do it. Lizards can regrow their tails. And I remember in medical school, there was a lecture on

amputations and dressing changes and I don't remember the detail but I remember being fascinated by a lecture on amputated fingers and we had a lecture that described how an amputated fingertip above the level of your distal interphalangeal joint so the fingertip was cut off and

they were actually able to create a dressing that did not put any pressure on the fingertip. And they have found that if you don't put pressure on the fingertip, no, no tight dressings that your finger can grow back just like it was initially after disinputation. And this is something that I believe is related to

Coach JPMD (01:49.536)
the angiogenesis of blood vessels and tissues. And people don't realize that we have the ability to heal. But a lot of times we do things for our body that prevents it from being that prevents it from healing. So in an article,

In 2014, there was a review that reviewed secondary healing of fingertip amputations. And it describes exactly what I remember in medical school where secondary healing of fingertip amputations have pretty much the same results, if not better results in some cases than primary closure.

Yes, you have more risk of infections, but the outcomes seem to be about the same. But it does take a little bit longer to heal. And, you know, sometimes we are not patient with our healing process. But it does happen and it can happen. So there you go. Well, thank you for listening to another Did You Know episode and we'll see you next week.

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