Doctors take out 5-inch ice pick using keyhole surgery

NEW DELHI: Doctors at AIIMS Trauma Centre recently pulled out a five-inch long ice pick from the chest of a 27-year-old man with the help of a keyhole surgery. The man was stabbed in his back and the metallic part of the ice pick had pierced his left lung, leaving him critical, doctors said.

Professor of surgery at AIIMS Trauma Centre, Dr Biplab Mishra said the patient was initially taken to a nearby private hospital, where they performed a CT scan of the area. However, nobody operated upon him there and he was finally brought to the trauma centre.


"Usually, removal of metallic part piercing the body is done by opening the chest. But in this case, we achieved it using minimally invasive technique, also known as Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS). The impaled ice pick was safely removed (under proper vision and control) and the whole procedure took less than an hour," Dr Mishra said. Use of minimally invasive technique, he added, minimises trauma and the recovery is much faster compared to open surgery.


According to AIIMS Trauma Centre chief Dr Rajesh Malhotra, the ice pick had perforated his upper left lung and if it wasn't removed on time, it would have led to an infection and the internal bleeding would have left him choking to death.


"When a foreign body is removed or pulled out, the bleeding manifests due to loss of tamponading (pressure) effect. This is why we advise people to never try and pull out any impaled foreign object on their own. "They should be removed on the operating table under general anaesthesia by a surgeon," Dr Malthora said.


The patient told police that an unknown attacker had stabbed him in the back with the ice pick, when he was going to a market in Madipur area of west Delhi.