We live in a world where technology advances every day. With that it allows us to explore more possibilities and it also helps us treat conditions that were deemed untreatable before. When it comes to medicine, surgeons are able to perform surgeries and save lives that could not be saved even decades ago.
There are so many diseases right now that affect people and are almost impossible to cope with. Some of those diseases can be managed with a combination of medicines, some are still untreatable and some can be treated only with surgery.
We’ve all heard about the usual surgeries that are being performed every day, starting from knee and hip replacement up to surgeries to save lives and cosmetic surgeries.
But did you know that there are so many things that are being treated under the knife and that help people survive? Here we are going to talk about the unusual surgeries, when they are needed and what procedures are done.
Keeping a hand alive
You would not believe that this was possible! This surgery sounds like something that came out of a Stephen King novel, but it is actually a creative procedure where doctors show that they would do anything to help their patients.
As bizarre as it sounds, there is a procedure where if the hand cannot be attached to the arm of the person, the surgeons attach it to the person’s leg and hook it up on the body’s circulation. This surgery was done for the first time in China and the reason was that there were severe injuries on the patient’s arm.
When the arm was healed, they removed the hand from the leg and attached it to the right place. The patients that undergo this procedure are able to fully use all of their extremities. It is an amazing procedure and it shows that everything can be done.
Replacing a missing finger
This is probably one of the most interesting procedures. Sometimes doctors attach a toe on a person’s hand. This procedure was already performed in Ireland when James Byrne cut his thumb off with a saw.
The doctors removed the big toe of his left foot and replaced the missing thumb with the big toe. The operation was successful and the surgeons even managed to make the toe look more like a thumb.
Brain Surgery
When it comes to brain surgery, there are so many things that are being done now. Doctors help patients not only cope with their disease, but they also treat some of them. It is amazing how this type of procedure extends lives and make them better. Some of the conditions that are treated with brain surgery include:
- Trauma
- Stroke
- Brain Aneurysm
- Brain Tumor
- Parkinson’s Disease
- Epilepsy
How we are going to talk about one type of procedure that is pretty unusual and it’s not commonly done. There are a lot of experts who have divided opinions about the procedure, but it is a fact that it saves lives. All about neurosurgery, you can read at brain-surgery.com
Hemispherectomy
This is a procedure where the surgeon removes half of the brain in order to treat seizures. In some cases, the half is only disabled and not entirely removed. There are a lot of different seizures that may lead to hemispherectomy, but they all have one thing in common – the source is localized to a broad area of a single hemisphere of the brain.
This surgery is done only when there is nothing else that could be done to help the patient and when the seizures cannot be managed with medication alone. The first time when this surgery was performed was in 1923 by Walter Dandy.
The side effect of the surgery is that the patients have partial or full-body paralysis. Neurons from the remaining hemisphere usually take over tasks from the lost half by making new neural connections. This is extremely risky surgery, but the statistics show that it really helps the patients.
Lindbergh Operation
This is not an entirely unusual procedure, but what is unique about it is that it can fully be performed by robots. It is a procedure where the gall bladder is removed, and we know that that is pretty common.
However, in New York, this procedure was completed entirely by robots and they were controlled by doctors in France! The procedure took 45 minutes and the patient fully recovered.
This shows that soon we will be able to have much safer surgeries and remove human error. What do you think about this? Would you let machines operate on you instead of human doctors?
Two Hearts
Heart transplant surgery is another thing that is not really new or unique, but did you know that there are cases where a person can have two hearts?
There was a case where the patient needed a heart transplant, but the doctors realized that if they remove the old one to put in the new one, the new organ would fail immediately. Because of that, they decided to put the new heart next to the old heart.
This, of course, was a really risky procedure and it was only conducted on rats before. However, the procedure was a success and the patient, Tyson Smith recovered fully from it.
Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis
This is probably the most unusual and bizarre procedure there is. It is commonly known as a tooth in eye surgery and it involves taking a tooth and putting it into a working eye. It is used to repair the patient’s vision and it was proven to be successful.
The procedure goes like this: a tooth is removed from the person’s mouth along with the surrounding bone, then a hole is drilled in it and a lens is inserted in it. Then the surgeons attach the tooth in the patient’s cheek where it grows new blood vessels.
The tooth usually stays in the cheek for about a month. After that, the structure is removed from the cheek and implanted in the eye. Because there is a lens in the tooth, light is able to travel through it and the whole procedure restores the patient’s vision.
These are some of the procedures that are being done to help patients live better lives. It is truly amazing what doctors are able to do to help people. Is there a procedure you would like to add to this list? Is there a surgery that you find really interesting?
