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Severe Hand Injury Leads to Unique Diagnosis and Treatment

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A man massages his hand

As an educator, Almad Allen plays an important role in shaping the lives of young children. But the father of four says his most cherished role is that of husband and dad. A recent injury that left one of his hands maimed threatened the simple things in life that he holds most dear.

“As a man taking care of family, I felt emotional and helpless,” says the 44-year-old from East Cleveland. “It bothered me and I couldn’t see a way out. I couldn’t even throw a ball with my kids.”

Allen was kicked in the hand while restraining a student during an incident at the Maple Heights elementary school where he serves as principal. He initially assumed his hand was broken, but oddly felt no pain. In the days that followed, he began to slowly lose feeling and movement in two of his fingers.

“You feel like a broken-down car, that you’re not working right,” says Allen. “As I went through weeks of tests to see what was wrong with me, I began to hide my hand. It didn’t work anymore. I became depressed.”

He eventually underwent a nerve conduction study that determines how well the nerves in your hand are functioning by measuring how fast electrical impulses travel through them. The results led him to Kevin Malone, MD, Chief, Division of Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery at University Hospitals.

An Unusual Case

“As a result of the blunt traumatic injury to his hand, Mr. Allen developed heterotopic bone, or bone growing where it is not supposed to,” says Dr. Malone, who is also the Amy and Michael Southard Chair in Orthopedic Surgery. “This bone growth deep in his palm caused the nerve to be displaced and compressed, so it stopped working - resulting in paralysis of some of the muscles and deformity of the hand.”

Allen underwent a procedure that involved exploring the nerve and removing the bone. The hope was that once the nerve was back where it is supposed to be, it would recover and Allen’s muscles would begin working again. If much more time had passed, or the bone had not been discovered, Allen would have faced a tendon transfer. The procedure would have addressed the deformity and improved function, but his hand would have never fully recovered.

An Innovative Approach to Treatment

Allen is thankful he found Dr. Malone. “I initially faced tendon surgery and then he found a miracle bone – we call it that,” Allen chuckles. “Dr. Malone explains in a way that’s understandable. A bone was created out of nowhere to protect the nerve. He had never seen anything like it and called colleagues. This is what sets him apart. He could have done the tendon surgery and called it a day.”

A year-long journey was capped by physical therapy at Drusinsky Sports Medicine Institute at UH Ahuja Medical Center, where Dr. Malone performed the surgery in August 2023.

“His outcome will be much better with the spontaneous nerve recovery than what we would have ever expected from tendon transfer surgery,” says Dr. Malone. “While nerve injuries can occur, I have never encountered this particular injury and have not seen it listed in our medical literature until now.”

Making Medical History

Allen, who is naturally left-handed, forged through graduate school with the injury to his left hand. Now recovered, he will finish his doctorate in education administration this summer. And he is now part of medical journals from which others can learn. Dr. Malone and his team have written a case report that has been published in the Journal of Hand Surgery Global Online.

“I want people to know about this miracle because people took time to see me as more than a patient,” says Allen. “They really looked at my case, and it blows me away how different my life could have been. The moral of my story is to be patient, follow your doctor’s orders and build relationships. My team at UH made me motivated and peaceful.”

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