BRILLIANT SURGERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22070, 28 September 1933, Page 6

BRILLIANT SURGERY

AUCKLAND DOCTOR’S FEAT “A MEDICAL CURIOSITY * (Per United Press Association.) - AUCKLAND, September 27. By the skill of brilliant surgery tbe life of Robert Burns, aged 64, who was admitted to the Auckland Hospital on July 7 with the curtain rod of a motor car through his neck, was saved. He was discharged from hospital a month ago, and during his stay there he was a medical curiosity, many doctors making a point of studying his case and watching his recovery. “He should have been dead,” said a well-known doctor this morning in discussing the amazing recovery of the man who defied death. The doctor told of the delicate operation, of the strain on the surgeon, and admitted almost reluctantly that it was an extraordinary case. Burns ■was concerned in a motor collision at the foot of Ayre street. The car he was in overturned and he was pinned beneath with an iron curtain rod and jacket stuck through his neck, entering below one ear and protruding nine inches from the other side. Before he could be lifted into the ambulance the curtain rod had to be cut away from the car with a hacksaw. That took 20 minutes, and all the time Burns was conscious. After a morphia injection Burns was taken to the Auckland Hospital with the iron bar sticking out of the left side of his throat. He was conscious and rational, but admitted that he had been “knocked out.” Speech was impossible. Then came the task of taking the bar out of his throat. It was a young Auckland doctor in private practice wno performed the operation. The two wounds were hot enlarged, and with great skill the rod was extricated with a pair of pincers, just grazing the jugular vein as it was withdrawn. It was a surgical feat. Burns left the operating theatre in good condition, and although speech was impossible for over a week, he gradually improved. When he left hospital on August 23 he was eating well and his voice had returned. Except by X-ray photographs the medical men could not see what damage had been done to the throat because it was impossible to operate further, "