A 25 year old labourer from Hassan was impaled on Friday morning with a three-and-a-half foot rod, when he fell down from the third floor of a building, on the iron bars. One of them pierced him through his right  buttock and exited on the left side of his lower back.

A profusely bleeding Parameswar Kumar, the labourer, was brought to MS Ramaiah Hospital around 3.30pm by his friends. A team of doctors — Harshad M Shah, professor and head of Orthopaedics, Anil Kumar, associate professor of Surgery, Sanjay Desai, vascular surgeon, Subramaniam, resident anaesthesiologist and Raghavendra Pai, associate professor of Anaesthesiology assessed the patient and decided to operate him immediately.

“He was in excruciating pain and we couldn’t delay the procedure. It was an extremely challenging task as we explored the track of the rod and found that three-fourths of it was inside Parameswar’s body,” said Dr Sundaresh, medical director, MSR Hospital and senior professor of Orthopaedics.

The 10mm torque steel rod had penetrated Parameswar’s buttocks and had gone through the pelvis, spine, lower back, vertebral body and had come out on the left side of his lower back.

“The hip joint was damaged and the abdomen was full of blood as the rod had penetrated the inferior venacava — the major vein taking blood from the lower part of the body to the heart. The surgery took almost nine hours non-stop as the rod had to be exposed and carefully withdrawn ensuring that it did not damage any more tissues,” said Dr Sudaresh.

Parameswar is originally from Bihar and has no relatives in the City. “His friends had rushed him to the hospital. They are also labourers and had no money. The hospital students and staff donated blood as he needed around 40 bottles of blood. His condition is still critical and he is on the ventilator. He is responding to oral stimulus and his vital signs are stable but we need to monitor him closely for next few days,” said Dr Shah.

A team of 18 doctors pitched in to operate. “He was lucky that the rod did not injure his major arteries and spinal cord, which was just a few millimetres from the track of the rod,” said Dr Sudaresh.