(Photo/Chengdu Commercial Daily)

A small rubber band was found growing inside the flesh of a four-year-old boy Longong's wrist during an operation in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province.

Longlong, 4, now is lying in hospital bed, with his left arm wrapped with bandage. When he was one year old, his mother put a silver bracelet on his left wrist, which was meant to keep him safe. Last December, Longlong’s grandfather found that the silver bracelet was too tight for him, so he took it off and found out that an annular mark had been left on the boy's wrist. Since then, the mark became red and swollen. They went to the hospital several times, however, with multiple treatment measures, the swelling did not disppear.

On April 18, 2016, the family came to the Chengdu Women and Children's Central Hospital. Fu Song, doctor from the department of Child Orthopedics, thought the mark was a scar that would cause developmental disorders in distal limbs parrelleling Longlong’s growth and needed to be removed. So, the first step was to cure the inflammation and then after three months, they would remove the scar by conducting an operation.

However, on June 8, the Longlong family came to the hospital again because the situation had gotten worse. A big pustule had developed on Longlong's wrist. The doctors completed drainage operation at once. After the skin was cut open, they were all stunned: a rubber band was growing inside the flesh of longlong's wrist.

Doctor Fu said that according to the X-ray, the bone of Longlong's wrist was also being influenced. The boy could not stretch his left hand straight. He guessed that the rubber band on Longlong's wrist gradually wore through the skin and sunk into the flesh. As young child are usually pudgy, parents cannot see it easily. "If we didn't take out the rubber band, Longlong might have faced the danger of amputation," said the doctor.

After the operation, Longlong told his mother that he himself wore that rubber band on his wrist. His parents regretted that they worked in Chengdu while Longlong lived with his grandparents in Ziyang. They failed to take good care of him and in turn the boy began to dress and bathe himself since a year before, which is also a reason that the wound wasn't found earlier.