After her five-month-old son came close to losing a toe after a strand of hair got stuck, a Missouri mother warned of the dangers of it.
Last month, Sara Ward, aged 39, shared her story in a Facebook post, explaining that she had to bring her baby, Logan, into the ward after developing capillary tourniquet syndrome.
This situation occurs when a hair or thread is tied tightly to a finger, toe, or genitals and cuts the circulation, which can lead to infection and amputation.
In a chat with Good Morning America, Ward narrated: “This was my first time and even being a father for the third time, I was not aware of this beforehand. ‘I’ve never seen this or this never occurred to me to any of my friends or family members who are mothers. So I definitely didn’t know how serious this could be.”
The woman pointed out in the publication that on Saturday 22 in January, she and her husband “noticed a line that crossed the finger Logan’s foot and some redness“, but they did not give it much importance.
Two days later, the finger did not show improvement, so they went to the pediatrician, it was there that they heard for the first time instead of capillary tourniquet syndrome.
The mother said that the doctor and nurses spent about 40 minutes trying to remove the hair that was wrapped around the third toe of the right foot. After several maneuvers using special instruments, they were able to obtain a part without being sure that they had completely removed it.
After the procedure, they were sent home with the instruction to monitor Logan’s condition, which got worse because in a matter of hours, they noticed that his finger was swollen and starting to turn purple.
Seeing him like this, they took him to an urgent care center and advised them to go directly to the emergency room at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, where Logan was admitted overnight.
Twelve nurse practitioners, pediatricians and surgeons tried to find the hair with tweezers, scalpels, magnifying glasses and special lights, Ward wrote in the post, even saying they used Nair, a depilatory cream to remove hair, to try to break the strand of hair.
The day after Logan was admitted to the ho Spital, doctors told Ward and her husband that they were considering surgery to remove the hair. And while Ward is unclear on what exactly changed, her baby’s condition began to improve and they were able to avoid surgery at the last minute.
‘A lot of you might be thinking, it’s just a hair, why is it so hard to get? I know I thought that,’ she wrote in her post. “But the strand of hair can wrap so tightly around the limb and then start to swell and contract in the area.
“The skin begins to form on the hair and becomes deeply embedded in the tissues. It makes it impossible to see,” she detailed.
The medical team speculated that there was just a random strand of hair on her pajamas that began to get caught on her toe. Then with all his kicks, it just wraps around the toe and starts to restrict the blood flow,” he explained.
Ward told GMA that Logan’s toe took about a week to “completely return to normal”, and commented that he fully recovered three weeks after the scare.
Hair tourniquet syndrome is a medical condition in which a hair or thread becomes tightly bound to a finger or toe or to the genitals, which cuts off circulation and can lead to infection and amputation.
It usually affects young babies. Hair can get caught in blankets, socks, or pajamas and wrap around the appendix, and it’s often so thin that parents and doctors can easily miss it.
Finally, Ward calls the parents to have their babies’ fingers and toes checked for hair or threads.