Miraculous escape for man, impaled by iron rod

New Delhi, Jul 17 (UNI) It was indeed a major surgical feat by doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) when they took out an iron rod that had pierced through the body of a 23-year-old man.

The surgery was very unconventional as the iron angle was taken out after cutting through four ribs.

The victim-Supratim Dutta, an executive of a multinational company has miraculously survived after an iron angle of a Delhi Metro construction site, impaled through his abdomen and chest.

Giving details about the operation, Dr M C Mishra, head of the Trauma Centre, told mediapersons that the challenge before the doctors was to retrieve the rod without causing any tissue damage.

''The usual tendency is to remove a penetrated foreign body by directly pulling through the wound, but in this case it would damage the nearby organs by the shearing force of the metallic pole, especially when the metallic body was almost in contact with the heart and left kidney,'' he said.

Mr Dutta was travelling in a cab when his car hit the iron angle at a DMRC site at Ghitorni on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road. The driver allegedly had dozed off, which led to the car going out of control.

The rod penetrated through the bonnet of the car and pierced through his torso.

Mr Dutta remained fixed to the car for about half an hour. He was freed from that positiion after his friends reached the site and cut through the iron bar using fas cutters, with the help of Delhi Metro workers.

The MNC excutive was rushed to AIIMS, where he was operated upon.

The surgical team was headed by Dr Biplab Mishra and Dr Sushma Sagar and the anaesthesia team by Dr Chhavi Sawhney.

The bar had gone through the upper abdominal wall and exited through the back of left side of chest wall. His anterior abdominal wall, liver, stomach had been injured by the rod, diaphragm was ruptured at two places--where the heart rests and behind the spleen, doctors said.

The rod missed the heart and the left kidney only by millimeters, Dr Mishra informed.

He was lucky not to sustain any injury to major blood vessel in the adjacent area and spine, he added.

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