A story on self surgery

reporterstoday: Surgery is normally a skillful, delicate procedure that involves a surgeon and a patient. However, over the years, for many reasons, one of the players in this classic duet has been absent.In some cases, a surgeon’s dedication to understanding the human body goes far beyond the walls of the library, inspiring them to cut themselves open.In other cases, extreme situations have made extreme actions the only viable option.Self-surgery, or autosurgery, is certainly not a frequent occurrence — especially in modern times. However, it does happen.

Werner Theodor Otto Forssmann was studying medicine in Germany in the 1920s when a professor of his planted a question in his mind. That question was: Is it possible to reach the heart through the veins or arteries without the need for traumatic surgery?Back then, the only way to access the heart was by conducting a fairly risky surgical procedure

.Forssmann came across an article describing how a veterinarian had reached a horse’s heart with a catheter via the internal jugular vein. This transports blood from the brain, face, and neck to the heart.He came to the conclusion that in humans, he could use a ureteric catheter to reach the heart via the cubital vein, which lies close to the surface of the arm and travels to the heart.Excited, Forssmann told the chief of surgery that he planned to attempt the procedure on a patient.The chief was rightly concerned for the patient’s safety and blocked his plans. So, Forssmann asked if he could carry out the procedure on himself. Once again, the chief responded in the negative.

Undeterred, the young surgeon spoke with the operating room nurse; as the keeper of the equipment, he would need to have her permission.She was impressed with the idea and offered herself as a test subject. Despite her courage, Forssmann was still determined to carry out the procedure on himself.He strapped the nurse down and pretended to make an incision on her, but he anesthetized his own cubital vein.

He managed to advance the catheter 30 centimeters up his arm before the nurse realized that she had been duped.Forssmann asked her to call in an X-ray nurse so that he could chart the catheter’s internal voyage from his arm to his heart.While they were taking pictures of the catheter, a colleague saw what Forssmann had done and attempted to pull the catheter out of his arm. However, Forssmann won the ensuing tussle and continued his procedure.

The first images from the X-ray showed that the catheter had reached the level of his shoulder, so he continued feeding it through. Eventually, he achieved his goal: he could see the tip of his right ventricle cavity.The procedure was a success, but Forssmann had gone against the grain and was dismissed from his residency. Unable to find any surgical position, he turned to urology.

Then, 17 years later, alongside two others, he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his part in the invention of cardiac catheterization.Forssmann’s self-surgery was all in the name of medical advancement, but the next was a fight for survival.