Warning: This story could be disturbing and heart-wrenching for some readers.
A two-month-old baby is at a risk of losing his toe and it is a strand of hair to be blamed. The incident surfaces from China where an infant's toe turned black after a strand of hair, presumed to be of the mother's, tangled around the toe for about 10 hours.
The hair reportedly cut off blood supply to the digit. As a result, the toe swelled up and it soon turned black, Daily Mail reported. It was after 10 hours that the child's father noticed the wounded leg.
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According to local reports, when the child was taken to the hospital, the hair was there for so long that the toe's flesh began growing around the strand. Doctors in Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province, said that the child's toe has to be amputated because necrosis has set in.
Talking about the incident, the baby's father revealed that since his wife was looking after her own father, who suffered a heart attack, the responsibility of the baby and his year-old sister fell on the father's shoulder.
Doctors are said to be monitoring the child hoping that the regular circulation returns and they could save the toe. While doctors are deeming such an incident as rare, they have been repeatedly been warning parents about the hidden danger to newborns' toes and fingers have from stray hairs.
Called 'toe tourniquet syndrome', newborns are at a high risk of falling prey to the syndrome because post-pregnant women suffer from hair loss and there are high chances that a strand of hair could come in contact with the child.
A similar case was reported in 2016 which went viral on Facebook. A 32-year-old father took to the social media platform to share that a strand of hair wrapped around his daughter's toe and swelling the digit up.
Unlike the Chinese incident, the parents were soon to have noticed the distress their child was in and quickly found medical aid. Daily Mail reports that there are around 60 instances of the bizarre syndrome in the UK each year.
Yet, there is less awareness about the syndrome.
