After a rare four and half hours surgery and fighting against possible infection attack and drying up of tissues, doctors at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) at Imphal (in Manipur) successfully rejoined the penis of man, which he had chopped off.
A report appearing in the The Times of India stated that the 57-year-old man, reportedly a psychiatric patient, completely chopped off his penis with a sharp weapon on Monday at about 5 pm. His family rushed him to the nearby district hospital from where he was shifted to RIMS, about 30 km away and all these happened within two hours.
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The report further quoted RIMS hospital Superintendent Ch Arunkumar Singh as saying, “Generally, there is a window of seven hours but that too under special conditions of wrapping the severed organ and the stump in saline cover to keep off infection and prevent the tissues from drying up.”
The patient here had not taken all these precautions but it was the immediate arrival at the hospital that proved to be the key element. “Ideally, in such cases the patient should be brought to hospital within one hour. As long as the tissue is wet, may be for seven hours, we can repair it. Here the time between surgical intervention and the occurrence incident was two hours,” Singh said.
“In addition to reaching the hospital immediately, the patient had used a very sharp knife and so the wound was a clean-cut one without any contamination or infection. The veins and arteries were not intact and were not damaged. Had he used a dao or a heavier weapon thing would have been different,” Singh said.
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“The patient is absolutely fine now. He is healing and the blood supply has resumed and is completely normal. His urethra part has been repaired, but right now he is on catheter for passing urine. We are observing him for any development of infection and if he remains normal, he would be fit to be discharged within few days,” Singh said. The hospital had done a similar surgery in 2004.
“Such cases are very rare because, except mentally unstable people will cut off one’s vital parts. In case of any accidental cut, we can do it but the time interval will be crucial,” Singh added.