Latest News | Fisherman Recovers from High Risk Brain Surgery in Kerala Hospital
Get latest articles and stories on Latest News at LatestLY. A 57-year-old fisherman, whose skull was shattered into pieces in a freak accident, got a new lease of life after doctorssuccessfully performed a surgery here recently.
Thiruvananthapuram, Sept 8 (PTI) A 57-year-old fisherman, whose skull was shattered into pieces in a freak accident, got a new lease of life after doctorssuccessfully performed a surgery here recently.
In a procedure that lasted about five hours, a team led by Dr M D Sreejith, Neurosurgeon of a private hospital here, managed to extricate the broken pieces of the skull from the patient's partly damaged brain in a high risk surgery in August.
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The survival rate in such cases being only razor-thin and almost negligible.
"Although the odds were heavily stacked against the patient the critical nature of the wound, the collateral injuries he suffered on the chest and his age we are happy the patient could leave the hospital cured in over 10 days time," said Sreejith.
It was on August 14 that the cable of the hydraulic fishing net hauler snapped and pierced through the patient's skull when he was in the high seas, fishing on board a trawler off the coast of Neendakara fishing harbour in Kollam with his colleagues.
Not only did the incident cause him serious head injury, he was tossed off the boat in the impact.
To make matters worse, his chest violently hit the side of the trawler as he hurtled into the water.
His colleagues immediately stopped the boat and two of them rescued and brought him back to the trawler even as he was losing consciousness.
An ambulance was ready on the coast and he was shifted immediately to the nearest hospital.
By the time he reached the hospital the patient was finding it difficult to breathe and was immediately intubated, a process in which a tube is inserted into a persons trachea for ventilation.
The patient was shifted to KIMS HEALTH here, where the surgery was performed. "The wound resembled a bullet injury, in which the skull gets shattered into several pieces on slug impact. Each bit had to be carefully extricated from the brain.
The patient survived the operation. While we waited fingers-crossed, he moved his fingers on the second day which gave us hope," said the surgeon. The patient had an ICD (Intercostal Drainage in both chest) apart from an ET tube (Endotracheal tube).
On the third day, he was slowly weaned away from the ventilator.
However, there was a setback on the fifth day as the patient showed signs of pneumonia, largely due to the blow he suffered on the chest and the sea water he ingested.
A tracheostomy was performed and the patient was given support to breathe.
The patient's condition improved later and he was discharged.
The man will have to come to the hospital after a couple of months to attach a titanium cap to the part of the skull that was traumatized, Sreejith said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)