Would You Like To Be Fully Conscious During Open Heart Surgery?
Why someone would want to do this, I haven’t a clue.
Swaroup Anand, 23, from Bangalore, is fully conscious as he undergoes open-heart surgery. An epidural to the neck, administered at the city’s Wockhardt Hospital, has numbed his body. Dr Vivek Jawali pioneered the technique ten years ago and has recently released a tutorial on DVD which gives a step-by-step guide to the procedure – sorry, but you can only get a copy if you’re a surgeon or an anaesthetist.
Seems there would be considerable risk of respiratory compromise is the epidural went too high. But according to this video, over 400 cases have been performed, including a bypass with aortic valve replacement!
I don’t know… I’m not sure I could stomach the sound of the bone saw or, worse, if the surgeon said “Oh, crap…”
h/t: Slashdot
Reference:
Chakravarthy MR, Jawali V, Patil TA, Srinivasan KN, Manohar M, Khan J, Jayaprakash K, Das JK, Mahajan V. “High thoracic epidural anaesthesia as the sole anaesthetic technique for minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass in a high-risk patient.” Ann Card Anaesth. 2003 Jan;6(1):62-4.Musings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
I always think it best for doctors to be fully conscious while performing all surgeries – especially open heart surgery.
Interesting is the fact that the reCaptcha for this blog is “lasagna levels.” I do think we should check lasagna levels on all physicians before they perform open heart surgery.