The unfortunate saga of injured New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul continues.
Pierre-Paul, likely to escape any criminal charges for possessing the fireworks which reportedly injured him during a fourth of July celebration, remains in a Florida hospital and, per Justin Tasch of NYDailyNews.com, there has still been no confirmation as to whether Giants officials have been able to reach him and gauge the severity of his injuries.
"A contingent of Giants officials, including vice president of medical services Ronnie Barnes, traveled to Miami on Monday to check on Jason Pierre-Paul at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where the Giants defensive end is believed to have undergone surgery after injuring his hand in a fireworks accident July 4, but the team still hadn't seen the 26-year-old player as of Tuesday afternoon," writes Tasch.
The notion that Pierre-Paul likely underwent surgery in the wake of the incident jibes with a report, which HNGN passed along Tuesday afternoon, alleging that JPP had skin grafts to repair the damage to his hand.
"We cut away all the dead tissue down to live tissue, usually fat, take skin from another part of body, close that area with an incision, and attach the skin to the area where you've removed dead tissue," said Dr. David Greenhalgh, the chief of burn surgery for Shriners Hospital for Children Northern California & UC Davis Medical Center, via Tasch. "A firework burn to the palm - you would possibly do a skin graft. The good thing for a palm burn is that it's very thick skin, so it has a better chance of healing on its own than a thin part of the body, like an area on the back of a hand. An athlete who uses his hand a lot has got a thick callous, and will do better. It depends on how hot the agent (firework) was, how long he was in contact with it and how thick the skin is."
Per Greenhalgh, third degree burns are most commonly associated with and treated by skin grafts.
From the sounds of things, the non-football injury list is likely were Pierre-Paul is headed.
"While a decision on whether to place Pierre-Paul on the NFI list will depend on the ultimate condition of his hand after a full team evaluation, one team source said that placing him on the NFI list is already 'a strong consideration,'" per Tasch.
If JPP is, in fact, placed on the NFI list, he is likely to miss the first six games of the 2015 NFL season.
