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In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

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111–120 of 217 posts

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#111
post #96

I've had an spontaneous pneumothorax when I was a teenager. Had to undergo emergency surgery with only local anesthesia. The surgeon while cutting my chest asked: "You're sure it is this side, right?", which I confirmed. He then said: "Ok, if you're wrong I'm not going to jail alone."

I did some hostile environment training a while back, one of the medical courses was about "sucking chest wounds", where someone gets shot (or stabbed), and the action of breathing fills the chest cavity and thus means the lung can't work. It's been a long time since I did the course as I went a few years without having to travel to the kinds of places where it's likely I'd need to apply it, but I do remember a plast…

so funny you mention the vaseline impregnated gauze. I have had more than one instructor say the best thing to use as a chest seal is the wrapper itself. Vaseline sucks to try and tape down. The metallic shiny wrapper it comes in makes a nice seal though.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to what happened to a doctor in Antarctica: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/people-in-ant...

I know a guy who went there (McMurdo in Antartica) the year after this happened (so similar situation - there is only one doctor that needs to do everything for everyone). Again, you're there for a long time and there is no help coming if you have a problem in the middle of winter. Before you go, they do as much as possible to ensure you won't have medical issues once you get there. One of the things is that they str…

that they strongly suggest you get your wisdom teeth taken out. The guy I know did so a few weeks before leaving.

That seems to fall under the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" category -- if he was an adult with no prior issues from his wisdom teeth, he'd have been better off either leaving them alone, or having them removed 6+ months prior. I'm surprised they let him do it just a few weeks ahead.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#113
post #82
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the surgeon was pointing to the left side of OP, they just answered “it’s the right side” meaning that the right side was the right side … Guess what the surgeon did.

This is why I say “correct” instead of saying “right.”

Doesn't help if the doctor's question was "Am I cutting into the right side?"

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#114
The funny thing is, as an orthopedic surgeon in England, Wallace probably hadn't put in a chest tube in years, while the other "junior" doctor training in internal medicine, Tom Wong, probably did one every week. I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect Dr Wong probably did most of the procedure while the senior doctor Wallace took most of the credit later.

As the senior doctor, Wallace was certainly responsible for the care of the patient, which makes his inadequate examination of the patient while still on the ground, and his failure to recommend the patient be sent to the ER for a full examination a little concerning. If true, advising the plane NOT to divert and land because it might make the pneumothorax worse is also strange - as I understand it, you would expect the gas in a pneumothorax to get smaller as the pressure in the cabin returned to (sea level) atmospheric pressure, unless Boyles Law no longer applies? :) [Edited to clarify "atmospheric pressure" means sea level pressure in this case]

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#115
post #28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eight hours! It's hard to believe the woman's condition was critical enough to require invasive surgery with these makeshift tools mid-flight, but so stable post-op that the doctors did not recommend an emergency landing. I understand they recommended against landing pre-op because of worries about cabin pressure, but why not after the surgery? She's going to have to come down at some point.

Maybe she didn't have any kind of health insurance in any country except the one she was traveling to. So when the doctors told her she could endure the rest of the flight, she chose to do so instead of going bankrupt by the medical fees. It would be also insteresting to know if she hid her injuries before boarding for the same reason.

I wager to say that to most people in the developed world such thoughts would not occur, and almost certainly not to Brits (that are used to the NHS).

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#116
post #8

I raise you the guy who removed his own appendix in the jungle after escaping from a prisoner of war camp: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/the-war-hero-who-remove...

Similar to what happened to a doctor in Antarctica: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/people-in-ant...

All of these incidents remind me of episodes from House MD. I swear they made one on this Antartica where House did a “zoom call”.

The airplane guy had more complications than ruptured lung but apparently he had just came out of scuba diving into the plane.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#118

The funny thing is, as an orthopedic surgeon in England, Wallace probably hadn't put in a chest tube in years, while the other "junior" doctor training in internal medicine, Tom Wong, probably did one every week. I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect Dr Wong probably did most of the procedure while the senior doctor Wallace took most of the credit later. As the senior doctor, Wallace was certainly responsible for…

That makes sense. Once I took a packet of Doritos on board, and it blew up like a balloon once the plane took off and went to cruising altitude!

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#119
post #28
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eight hours! It's hard to believe the woman's condition was critical enough to require invasive surgery with these makeshift tools mid-flight, but so stable post-op that the doctors did not recommend an emergency landing. I understand they recommended against landing pre-op because of worries about cabin pressure, but why not after the surgery? She's going to have to come down at some point.

Maybe she didn't have any kind of health insurance in any country except the one she was traveling to. So when the doctors told her she could endure the rest of the flight, she chose to do so instead of going bankrupt by the medical fees. It would be also insteresting to know if she hid her injuries before boarding for the same reason.

Delhi was the nearest airport , India has[1] one of the cheapest healthcare in the world which is considered acceptable.

Tones of people fly to India to get major surgery done , medical tourism is a booming industry there.

For a British resident it wouldn't be even a factor on the top of the mind as they would be used to NHS covering everything and most people would expect travel insurance to cover this - it probably would have

[1] even in 1995

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#120
post #2

Interestingly, the surgeon published a post-mortem case report titled "Managing in Flight Emergencies" in the British Medical Journal [1]. The title of the publication makes it seem as if this in-flight surgery with a coat-hanger is a routine occurrence. Remarkable! [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/311/7001/374

> Interestingly, the surgeon published a post-mortem case report titled "Managing in Flight Emergencies"

Literally NOT a post mortem

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