AIIMS removes 6 inch-long knife from man's back in complex surgery

Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here have successfully removed a six inch-long knife from a man's back following a stabbing incident in a difficult surgery.

The 30-year-old man, a native of Karnal in Haryana, allegedly suffered the injury while protecting his jewellery shop from robbery on July 12.

"The patient came to the emergency of the hospital in the late evening the same day with the knife still impaled in his back.The surgical procedure of posterior decompression with removal of knife and posterior fixation was done on July 13," AIIMS Trauma Centre chief Dr Kamran Farooque said.

The Karnal resident was stabbed at around 2 pm and before reaching the trauma centre at around 10 pm, he had gone to two hospitals. Given the condition of the patient and the complexity of the case, he was referred to us, Farooque said, adding that the patient was in his senses and his vital parameters were normal when he reached here.

"It was a challenging case as he was stabbed in the back and therefore, the position of the patient which we normally keep during resuscitation or during imaging and surgery is supine. But in this case, the patient could not have lied on the back because any movement of the knife could have caused further injury to the spinal cord," Dr Amit Gupta from the department of surgery said.

"The blade of the knife was just 2 or 3 millimetres away from the great vessel aota which carries blood from the heart. At least, six inches of the knife was inside," he said.

Farooque said the CT scan showed that the knife had gone through the vertebral column breaking the bone. It had also pierced the spinal canal which holds the spinal cord and further into the body of the vertebra, he said.

"The knife was taken out with very careful dissection around the spinal cord. The covering of the spinal cord was repaired and also stabilised the vertebral column by rods," he explained.

The doctor added that the patient is improving.