Leech Is Used to Save Finger : Medicine: A surgeon applies an unaesthetic but age-old remedy to aid in circulation.

When modern surgical techniques failed to restore circulation to a reattached finger, a Camarillo surgeon turned this week to an age-old remedy: the leech.

Dr. Lorenzo Giles Walker worked for three hours in surgery at Pleasant Valley Hospital Monday to repair an Oxnard man’s three crushed fingers, one of which had been left hanging by its skin after a forklift accident.

Walker reattached arteries, tendons and nerves, repaired bones and stitched together skin on three fingers. But the survival of the ring finger, which had been most seriously damaged, was in question at the end of the surgery.

“I thought I had done a pretty good anastomosis on this guy,” Walker said Thursday, referring to the procedure. “But yet his finger wouldn’t turn pink. I was upset.”

Laureano Topete, 24, of Oxnard was in danger of losing his finger because of poor circulation, Walker said.

Finally, blood began to flow into the finger, indicating that the reattached artery was working. But before Walker could relax, the pink finger began to turn purple, a sign that the blood had no route out of the finger.

That’s when Walker, trained at Harvard Medical School, decided to call in the leeches. He had learned the technique in 1988 and 1989 during a fellowship at UCLA Medical Center, where the technique is practiced routinely, he said.

Walker ordered 20 leeches at $6 each from Leeches USA, a New York company that has shipped more than 10,000 of the worms to medical centers nationwide since the company began in 1986. The company dispatched the water-packed creatures by Federal Express.

Leeches--the blood-sucking slugs that attached to Humphrey Bogart in the “African Queen”--perform two functions that modern medicine cannot duplicate: They can thin blood in a localized area, and they can cause blood to ooze for hours after the puncture, said Marie Bonazinga, president of Leeches USA.

“Obviously if there were a more aesthetic method that worked, we would use it,” Walker said Thursday. “But there is no technological substitute for the leech.”

When Walker first told Topete that he would use leeches to help heal the injury, Topete’s reaction, like the man, was good-natured.

“I thought he was joking,” he said.

Topete, who patiently answered questions at a press conference Thursday, posed with a leech for photographers. Smiling, his pain dulled by a constant supply of Valium, Topete said he was unperturbed by the thought of a slippery worm sucking his blood.

“That’s my friend,” he said, playfully stroking the worm as it prepared to attach itself to Topete’s good hand before a nurse snatched it away with a pair of tweezers.

“I like animals,” Topete said. “I think that’s great that an animal was helping me.”

Topete said he was finishing his shift driving a forklift at a Ventura County office in Camarillo about 2 p.m. Monday when the lift got caught in the roof of a building. When he tried to free it, the lift slid down and caught his fingers.

He wasn’t sure he still had his fingers immediately after the accident. But on Thursday, Walker predicted an 80% likelihood that Topete will keep the fingers, thanks to the leeches.

Another few days should tell, Walker said. Meanwhile, the 32-year-old doctor will check frequently on his patient and continue to apply the leeches up to twice a day until Topete’s blood circulation is restored.

“You worry about these things,” he said. “It’s like a child.”