Innovative surgery allowed a musician to resume playing the saz. Details are in this study:
“Reconstruction of the left thumb with a second toe transfer in a musician’s hand,” Serhan Tuncer, Billur Sezgin, Ismail Kucuker, Basar Kaya and Suhan Ayhan, Journal of Plastic Surgery and Hand Surgery, epub July 4, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Ivan Oransky for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey, explain:
“We report the case of a 21-year-old man who had second toe-to-thumb reconstruction after post-traumatic amputation of his left thumb at the metacarpophalangeal level. Before the accident, he played a musical string instrument, the “Saz”, regularly. The traditional method of playing the Saz is to pluck the strings with the fingers of the right hand and pick the strings with the thumb and fingers of the left hand. Three months after the operation, he was playing the saz again, proving that he had sufficient strength in opposition, adduction, and flexion force in the transferred toe.”
Here’s video of someone else playing a saz, but using all-original fingers: