Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message 242
Peace Corps Online writes "Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. 'He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,' Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. 'I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,' Nott said."
In the US you will likely be billed $1 per text + (Score:1, Interesting)
In the US you will likely be billed $1 per text + your rate each way + other doctors rate and you hmo says we don't pay for texts so we will pay $0 as we don't don't part pay for operations
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically what happened was the guy got bob on the phone and said, "yeah bob, can you fax me over page 113 of surgery for dummies?"
Sending what amounts to textbook instructions to trained personnel in the field is hardly a noteworthy achievement.
Please don't tell Blue Cross... (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll be all over this method of reducing healthcare costs!
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:4, Interesting)
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
There is a serious problem, though: text messages may never get to the destination or may get there late, in case the text server is busy or unavailable, and the most serious problem is that you won't know that someone had tried to text you. With phone calls, at least, you know when the line gets cut off by network problems, but with text messages you can never know unless you were expecting a particular message. There is also no guarantee that you will receive the text messages in the order they were sent, if the server has problems.
Essentially texting has very similar problems to email when the email servers and intermediaries don't work correctly.
So, imagine getting the instructions for reattaching the arm before the instructions for removing it, while the instructions for cutting the bone were never delivered at all...
Don't.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:3, Interesting)
That was really hard. But I'm REALLLY stoned. Did I win?
Re:Did you miss the part where he's IN AFRICA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently you and the AC below you have still managed to miss the fact that he's IN! AFRICA!
This is a doctor doing aid work [msf.org] in a third world WAR ZONE [iht.com], at a hospital less than 20 miles from the border with Rwanda. [google.com] This is volunteerism; he doesn't even have sufficient *blood* to do the surgery safely, much less someone to reimburse him for what might end up as a several hundred dollar phone bill. You work with the tools you have, and the fact that he was able to pull this off given the resource and budget constraints that were put on him is something to be commended.
Commended. Not denigrated by some privileged jackass who has NO FREAKING CLUE what the world is like outside of his wealthy Western lifestyle and doesn't know (or probably even care) what kind of resources these doctors are working with. This guy takes a month off each year to go work for FREE to save lives, working 24-hour trauma shifts, and you gripe him out because his method of checking with his colleagues isn't high class enough for you -- because he isn't emptying his pocket fast enough.
You make me sick.