Have you ever heard the story of Rogozov’s self- surgery ? Leonid Rogozov was a Russian surgeon who, during an expedition in 1960, operated on his appendix. I know you’ve been frozen. Well imagine him.
Rogozov was in the spotlight of the former Soviet Union and after more than 60 years his heroic deed is still remembered. What was it that led the doctor to make such a decision? Before we talk directly about the odyssey itself, let’s talk a little more about the surgeon.
Who was Leonid Rogozov?
Known as ” the man who operated on himself ” Leonid Rogozov, a native Dauriya doctor and graduate of the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute who participated in an expedition to Antarctica in 1960 that would last a little over a year.
At 26, he was assigned to the mission in the Soviet Antarctic Expedition as a medical surgeon. He and a multidisciplinary team left the Novolázarevskaya base, and on April 29, 1961, he began to feel symptoms of weakness, fever and nausea.
Hours passed and a new symptom arrived. A fixed pain in the right iliac fossa (lower right part of the abdomen) and although he tried a significant number of drugs to calm the pain, they were not enough.
The pain was increasing and Rogozov ‘s state of health was getting worse , and taking him to a hospital was not an option, since the base was very far from any population . To all this was added that there were no planes available and the climatic conditions of Antarctica did not help at all.
With this scenario and taking into account that his colleagues who had no medical training, the only option was self-surgery.
One of the problems was that he could not do it under general anesthesia , for obvious reasons, since if he had to operate himself he needed to see and be aware of what he was doing. He instructed his companions what to do if he lost consciousness , and at 10:00 p.m. on the night of April 30, Rogozov made the initial incision and began the surgery. In order to see what he was doing, he used a mirror , so everything he saw was the other way around. Oh, and all this under local anesthesia , of course.
Although the surgery had minor setbacks, he managed to perform the appendectomy (which is how the operation to remove the appendix is called) and after explaining to his colleagues how they should wash the surgical material and after injecting antibiotics at the site of the operation, he fell exhausted. and passed out.
And the operation was a success?
If, after a few hours and with the weakness typical of the postoperative period, the problem of peritonitis was solved (which is what would have happened if the appendix had ruptured and the contents of the large intestine had reached the abdominal cavity, a surgical emergency situation in which, if it is not treated in time, it can end with the death of the patient). After 5 days the Russian doctor’s fever subsided and after two weeks of convalescence he resumed his activities as a mission doctor and continued with his Soviet things in Antarctica.
Undoubtedly, Rogozov’s self-surgery immediately captured public interest once the story broke. That same year Leonid received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, an award given to honor deeds while serving the state.
Is Rogozov’s self-surgery the only one in history?
If this surgery has left you speechless, let me tell you about 4 very important people who found themselves in the same situation as Dr. Rogozov and had to operate on themselves:
- Jerri Lin Nielsen , an American doctor who in 1998 while in Antarctica had to have a mastectomy to fight breast cancer.
- Deborah Sampson , a Massachusetts woman who pretended to be a man to participate in the war and who unfortunately in July of the year 1782 received two bullet wounds in the leg. In order not to be discovered, using a knife and sewing thread, she managed to remove one of them and left the other until the end of her days, since it was too deep to be removed.
- Evan O’Neil Kane , who performed a self-amputation of two infected fingers and a self-appendectomy in 1921, to see if it could be done under local anesthesia. Come on, any surgeon could have done it, but he decided to experiment on himself.
And you, given an emergency situation, would you be able to operate on yourself?
References:
- L. I. Rogozov (1964). “Self operation” (PDF). Soviet Antarctic Expedition Information Bulletin: 223–224.
- Rogozov, V.; Bermel, N.; Rogozov, LI. (2009). “Self-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report”. BMJ. 339: b4965. doi:10.1136/bmj.b4965. PMID 20008968. S2CID 12503748.
- Nielsen, Jerry; Maryanne Vollers (2001). Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-6684-5.
