A woman’s ear was ripped from her head during a horrific factory incident - before surgeons attached it to her foot in a bizarre procedure. The worker, whose surname is Sun, got her hair trapped in machinery during a shift at the factory in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan.
It ripped skin away from her scalp and neck - completely tearing off her left ear in the process. She was rushed to hospital, but doctors realised that conventional reattachment would be impossible given the extent of the damage.
Dr Qiu Shenqiang, who led her treatment, said the blood vessels around the detached ear were “severely damaged”.
To keep the ear alive, surgeons decided to attach it to Sun's right foot, where thinner skin and matching blood vessels could maintain circulation.
The procedure - known as heterotopic grafting - is used in microsurgery but is rarely carried out for ear replantation.
During the months that followed, Ms Sun had to protect the fragile graft, wearing loose footwear and keeping physical activity gentle.
After five months of "parasitic growth", surgeons at Shandong Qianfoshan Hospital in Jinan were finally able to transplant the ear back to its natural position.
Ms Sun was reportedly moved to tears when her stitches were removed, thanking the medical team for their painstaking work.
Earlier this year, a woman whose skull was virtually "internally decapitated" from her spine after a freak sports accident described having her head reattached by miracle surgeons. Megan King "turned into a human statue" after she fell to the ground while playing football in 2005, leading to decades of health struggles.
Megan, who was just 16 at the time, needed a staggering 37 operations after she jumped to catch a ball during a match and landed badly on September 21, 2005. Two decades after her horrific incident, doctors were able to reattach her spine and head in an incredible, and rare, surgery.
A decade after her horror fall, doctors were able to figure out what was behind her condition and diagnose her with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) in 2015. This rare genetic disorder impacts the body's ability to make collagen - a key joint tissue.
Doctors later fused her bones from her head down to her pelvis. Although spinal fusions are not uncommon, only 10% of people worldwide have been fused from the skull to the pelvis.
She said: "I'm literally a human statue. My spine doesn't move at all. But that doesn't mean I've stopped living."
