BALTIMORE — Scott Price was working with a wood splitter when it kicked out a fragment of a log, pinning his left hand against a metal plate and severing his thumb and forefinger. After his local hospital in Poconos, Pennsylvania, failed to reattach the digits, Price came to MedStar Health’s Curtis National Hand Center at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, which specializes in complex hand injuries and birth defects of the hands.

“When this initially happened, I thought, wow, my life is gonna be drastically different,” Price said at a follow-up visit on Thursday. “I was kinda anxious and excited to do it because it was pretty difficult going from having all my fingers to losing a thumb, so I was hopeful, and it definitely paid off.”

A year after his accident, James Higgins, chief of the Curtis National Hand Center, evaluated his recovery and asked if Price needed any additional help.

Price had gone through one double operation, where Curtis surgeons simultaneously removed his big toe and prepared his left hand to receive that toe in place of his lost thumb. In a follow-up surgery, they helped improve his grip range, so he could grasp larger objects without using his right hand to help open the thumb wider. At his recent visit, he demonstrated his grip strength by lifting a section of 4×4 lumber with his left hand only.

Thursday also kicked off the center’s monthly Complex Case Clinic, a free program bringing together MedStar’s top hand surgeons to assess injuries and treatment options for up to three patients.

“The Complex Case Clinic is an opportunity for patients to be seen by our entire staff,” Higgins said. “It’s great as a provider to feel like we thought through every aspect of the patient’s problem.

“And so we’ve now created this complex case clinic whereby we can bring those patients to the larger group, and it’s actually free to the patients. … I have some great ideas, but my partners may have even better ideas. And when we arrive, we will all get the opportunity to examine the patient, interview them and come up with some plans or formulate reconstructive options for them.”

Hand injuries make up 30% of cases treated in emergency departments, according to the National Institutes of Health, and 27 of every 100,000 babies born have some deformity of their arm or hand.

Price said the Curtis National Hand Center helped give him back some of his quality of life. Having a second opinion made the difference between living with a prosthetic, having no fingers at all, and having full use of his hand.

“From, like, the very beginning to now, it’s just a night and day difference,” he said. “I would say I can do pretty much everything that I used to be able to.”

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