This is the miraculous moment when surgeons meticulously removed a steel rod that had pierced both lungs of a man,.
Radovan Kuchera, 59, was picking cherries for his daughter when he slipped and impaled himself on a metal tree prop, just millimetres away from his beating heart after he fell from a ladder. Stunned surgeons found that the rod had cleanly passed through both lungs, narrowly missing his aorta, the body's largest artery, by the thickness of a piece of paper.
Incredibly, it also grazed his oesophagus but did not pierce it. Surgeon Martin Kalab, who led a five-hour operation to remove the rod at Olomouc University Hospital in the Czech Republic, said: "A few millimetres would have been enough and the man would no longer have been able to be helped. Mr Kuchera was extremely lucky."
Read more: I spotted Marks and Spencer’s ‘stunning’ £35 summer top that keeps selling out
The rod stuck through the unfortunate man (University Hospital Olomouc/News)Hypnotic video footage from the operation shows Radovan's heart beating strongly as the surgical team manoeuvres the rod before extracting it from his lungs. Surgery photos reveal the enormous scale of the operation with Radovan's torso flesh and skin cut across the full width of his body and then peeled back like an orange peel. The Mirror has chosen not to show video of the surgery due to its gruesome nature.
Brit 'saw her insides' after being cut open by propeller on luxury diving trip
Radovan later recounted how he had been picking cherries at a friend's house on 31st May when he fell and felt excruciating pain in his chest. He said in a statement obtained from the hospital by Newsflash: "I climbed up and hung the basket on the last rung."
The surgeons at work (University Hospital Olomouc/News)"When my basket was three-quarters full, I thought that was enough. I grabbed the ladder to take the basket off the hook and started to climb down. The ladder tipped over and I fell down." He added: "I wanted to pull the pole out from my chest myself, but luckily, a friend who rushed over advised me against it."
Firefighters had to use hydraulic shears to cut off both ends of the pole so Radovan could even fit in the ambulance. Dr Kalab explained: "The rod passed through the chest, the third intercostal space, pierced both lungs, and basically lay on the aorta. It also touched the oesophagus but did not perforate it. It also narrowly missed the pulmonary hilae, i.e. the places where blood vessels enter the lungs."
An X-ray image of the metal rod impaled through Radovan Kuchera, 59 (University Hospital Olomouc/News)
Radovan Kuchera, 59, poses in undated photo (University Hospital Olomouc/News)Hospital officials confirmed that Radovan was allowed home on 14th June, two weeks after the op. A spokesperson said: "Doctors agree that they have never encountered such a rare case in their practice/ However, according to them, the happy ending of the drama convincingly proves that the integrated rescue system and the multidisciplinary cooperation of top specialists at the Olomouc Medical University can turn around even seemingly lost cases."
Radovan later thanked the medical team for saving him. He said: "I have no words. Doctors have golden hands, I am very grateful to them. I thank everyone who saved me."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
