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."
interestingly the text message device could be use (Score:5, Insightful)
I long ago discovered my text-messaging device allows me to talk directly to another person through his or her text-messaging device. Amazing!
And, not only is this more efficient and accurate, it costs far less. Imagine the lives that could be saved if doctors were given instructions for talking through these text-messaging devices. I, for one welcome the emergence of these devices and their new-found features.
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who's never needed to pay the astronomical roaming charges or put up with the hideous interference and quality loss on a voice call.
Sometimes text is faster and cheaper, because you're not spending 90% of the call going "What? Please repeat!"
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Sometimes text is faster and cheaper, because you're not spending 90% of the call going "What? Please repeat!"
Apparently, you can land a plane with it (I can't find the /. link. Anyone?)
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Informative)
Not so long ago, there was a story about a pilot who was guided into landing by an air-traffic controller through a series of text messages after all the plane's electrical systems failed [gizmodo.com].
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SMS Pwnage (Score:2)
Damn that's a close call of which series of messages Pwned the most.
A. Surgery
B. Landing Aircraft.
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Plus, I'm not sure how reading a typed message from someone is any different from reading it out of a textbook.
Except that you can ask the person to clarify. I mean, yes this is funny. But it's not that goddamn funny. Or alarming at all.
Here's a headline:
"Person learns engineering by reading messages downloaded from the Internet."
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Insightful)
The doctor in England had done the procedure before, presumably successfully, whereas the textbook could make no such guarantee. Plus, as you said, the doctor in the DRC could ask him to clarify.
And you're right, it's not that funny, or alarming. What it is is fraking badass and awesome. I mean, they both had the skills to pull off an amputation by text message. That's some serious medical street cred right there, on both sides!
Plus, they saved a kid's life. Good for both of them! *raises glass*
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"rite nw u slice of da 3rd tndn"
"wtch 4 da musl"
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Insightful)
What it is is fraking badass and awesome.
Actually that is awesome. And somewhat badass. Though not fraking badass and awesome.
Fraking badass and awesome would be for example when Dr Leonid Rogozov removed his own appendix at Vostok Station in Antarctica in 1961. Of course when your own ass is on the line, your ability to perform suck fraking badass and awesome feats generally increases exponentially.
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It seems he applied the old surgeon's maxim:
Watch one, Do one, Teach one.
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:4, Funny)
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:4, Funny)
cracka stole my arm.
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I remember before text messages when BFF meant something slightly different... It always makes me laugh a little on the inside
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Butt Fuck Friday?
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Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:4, Funny)
he must be using one of those analog texting services.
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Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Insightful)
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call. You also get all the information already available if you need to look back at it quickly and it's in neat understandable writing (anyone who's ever read a doctor's scrawl will know what I mean). For this purpose (transmitting a technical procedure step by step) it's the better of the two media.
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Funny)
Text message will ensure that all the details get there
But none of the vowels.
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:4, Funny)
vwlls r vl. thts why thr r n vwlls n hbrw.
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That was really hard. But I'm REALLLY stoned. Did I win?
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so sms is like hebrew?
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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.
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of my favorite things about SMS. *When* the data arrive, they arrive intact.
I got my first cell phone about one year ago. I know, I know, but I really don't need one for normal communications. I just need it to place emergency calls. However (and since my prepaid arrangement allows free incoming texts), I was curious about this whole "texting" thing (which I would probably never use with another person), so decided to figure out just what is really happening. I discovered that most USA cell carriers have a text to email gateway.
Since the text messages are essentially email, I first decided to hack up a Python script that would alert me via text of any inclement weather. A simple NOAA weather data gatherer, parser, and sender to my SMS to email gateway has saved my ass numerous times. Really. And for a $10 TracPhone, that's not too bad. Of course this is not on par with doing surgery, but I thought it was pretty cool. I didn't stop there, though.
Since my carrier *does* in fact have a text to sms gateway, the communication can go two ways. Is it possible to create an *unsecure* remote shell so that I can give my home computer commands while away? Why not..? And so friends, in brief, text messages *do* in fact have use other than LOLing ur BFF, and doing remote surgery... You can monitor your torrents, and fetch new ones, kick your pesky friend off your wireless connection, write a new cron job, the possibilities are arbitrary... Just don't let anyone use your phone...
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Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
If you're somewhere that calls are garbled, what assurance do you have that text messages will get through?
Text is given a very low priority on the wireless network and there is no guarantee that it will ever arrive.
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If you can connect a call, you can be pretty sure that a text can come through. Even though the call can be so garbled as to be unintelligible, the text only needs a tiny bit of data to come through. Setting up a call is more "expensive" data-wise.
Also, a text doesn't need a working connection for more than an "instant", while a call requires a long, continuous connection.
Oh, and if the network nears its limit with traffic, sms is given higher priority while voice calls are dropped.
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Besides, the messages can be sent by a nurse who can then read the replies - no need for the doctor to hold the phone, he might have something else to do with his hands ...
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Well, I admit that not all doctors write well, but much of this comes from people being unable to decipher the language of prescriptions. A doctor doesn't write:
They write:
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...
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:2)
Yeah, haha. Now think for a couple seconds about actually performing phone-directed surgery, and maybe you'll see an advantage or two to using text instead of voice.
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I don't know where you're from, but I (in Germany) get a text message at the price of a minute of voice, and the first 50 in every month are included in the plan price.
In other countries it's much cheaper.
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Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them?
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Are you French or American?
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In other countries it's much cheaper.
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Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them?
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Are you French or American?
I don't know about France, but here in America we celebrate a diverse selection of counties.
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Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them? ;) ;)
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Are you French or American?
I don't know about France, but here in America we celebrate a diverse selection of counties.
Here in France we have no counties whatsoever. I think the Swiss have some though.
It's the eend... the eeend... (Score:2)
...to my karma. ;)
If only they knew, that I posted it as a joke, because unlike some other folks, I actually know that it's a funny stereotype.
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In other countries it's much cheaper.
Yes, but coverage is cheap if you have two countries splitting the cost of your cell phone tower. :P
Re:interestingly the text message device could be (Score:5, Funny)
>>I long ago discovered my text-messaging device allows me to talk directly to another person through his or her text-messaging device. Amazing!
You mean those wireless devices which replaced the devices which ran over wires which were originally built to text messages to each other in morse?
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Unless this is the Local Mime Club's Pint Night, I'd have to rate this one "+5, Sad".
Did you miss the part where he's IN AFRICA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you somehow miss the part where he was calling from Africa to the UK? Have you never priced an international call?
Assume that you're an Orange customer. (It's the first UK cell phone provider I could think of off the top of my head.) Roaming in Africa and calling England costs £1.20/minute (or over $1.75/minute) if you have the Orange Travel plan.
Texting is much, much cheaper. In fact, in Africa, it's the dominant form of cell phone communication because voice rates are so ridiculously high in comparison even among local carriers, according to a family member who spent several months there on a mission trip.
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£1.20/minute (or over $1.75/minute
Offtopic, but holy crap.... what happened to the pound!? Back when I paid attention to these things, a year ago, that £1.20/minute would have equated to over $2.52/minute USD.
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Shocking, isn't it? [x-rates.com] I have no idea what's been going on. The US dollar has apparently rallied against most major world currencies except the Japanese yen. Here's an article speculating about why. [businessweek.com] Apparently, risk adverse investors are dumping less "reliable" currencies in favor of "safe" ones like the US dollar and the yen. No, I don't get it either.
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Right, because when someone's life is on the line, the unknowledgeable doctor's first concern should be his cellphone bill, rather than having instant feedback from the doctor that knows what is going on.
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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
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I've done a lot of work in that neighbourhood, and believe me, there's no such thing as stable reception out there. You're luck on the odd occasion that you can get a call through.
Then you get screwed by your home operator cutting you off when you hit some predefined limit that you weren't aware was on there, and you can't call home to tell your wife that you weren't in the hotel that was shelled. Good times....
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The voice calls to another country are extremely expensive, and in the case of DR Congo I would imagine that call would cost more than the value of the town they were in.
So why sms messages? Because when you send a message to another country you get charged the same as you were texting anyone else in the country you are in (which is not expensive). This is the reason why they've used sms messages.
You want all the instructions before starting. (Score:5, Insightful)
else you are in deep trouble when the patient is open and the battery runs down or the net fails.
Re:You want all the instructions before starting. (Score:5, Funny)
WASSUP CUT ARM STCH SKN ! BL0D. LOL
a b c d e f g
slashdot filter
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Costly (Score:4, Funny)
Must have been an expensive operation considering the price of text messaging today.
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Yes, and his words most have been really cutting.
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Yes if you remember the cost of retrieving data from the Hubble Space Telescope vs. the cost of sending a text message you'll see that it costs an arm.
However, it should be noted (Score:5, Funny)
He intended to do a prostate exam, so it's not quite as good as it sounds.
How do you fit complex instructions in text? (Score:5, Funny)
Taken from the text logs:
MK UR FST CT ALNG CLR BON WTH STRLZD RZR K?
Things got a little dangerous when another text message came in from his wife mid operation.
U WANT LEG OR SHOLDER CUT FOR DINR?
Heh, but still some great work. It's tragic though that there's still a dearth of medical facilities in some countries and life-saving make-do operations like this are common. Kudos to Medicines Sans Frontiers for doing what our own governments should be doing.
GrpA
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A lot of medical jargon is (A) incredibly standardized and (B) designed to abbreviate.
Ever hear a doctor reciting a prescription over the phone to a pharmacist? They can compress a substantial amount of information about dosages, timing, when to take/avoid something, etc., into maybe a dozen characters. It'd be a bit moreso when you're talking about *removing someone's shoulder blade* (gah!), but if people on both sides know the jargon for anatomy and techniques, you'd probably be surprised at how much info
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On a recipe I got just a month ago: $(DRUG) 1mg 1/0/1
The doc forgot to explain it to me that this means: 1 pill in the morning, 1 in the evening.
Computing in the developing world (Score:2)
Stories like this make me wonder if cell phones will be the devices that actually deliver on the promise of OLPC.
Soo... (Score:5, Funny)
What exactly _is_ the emoticon for 'cut off limb X'?
Re:Soo... (Score:5, Funny)
this
one
It's quite simple, really.
Re:Soo... (Score:5, Funny)
o|-< + 8< 8< -> o,-<
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I'm gonna get rich when I invent a machine that lets you cut someone's arm off over the internet.
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That is the best joke I've seen in the last few weeks.
I for one admire your text-mode imagination Sir.
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That is ambiguous.
(|) looks suspiciously a lot like a mouth, a butt, female genitalia, etc. Wouldn't want to remove the wrong extremity.
I believe this one is clearer for the amputation of an arm:
8-@!-<
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I believe this one is clearer for the amputation of an arm:
8-@!-<
Or a Prince Albert gone horribly wrong.
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>-|O = >-|O - 0.5*(|)
So, remove half of the sleeping head? OK.
Amputation by text message? (Score:2, Funny)
See? That's why I don't want a cell phone.
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Yes, that's why I traded mine for a bone saw long ago, because, well, you never know.
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I wonder what it sounded like... (Score:5, Funny)
MT: lol sup? tru tru... kk well ur guna need 2 do a 4 1/4 amp. req rm of the cola bone n shlda blde.
DN: yea nm nm...... ok so txt me how
MT: ok is he there now?
DN: no im at home
MT: txt me wen u get there k?
Re:I wonder what it sounded like... (Score:5, Funny)
whole story (Score:5, Funny)
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That was awesome. You win 4 internets.
-l
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"Look!"
"It's just a text wound"
Old News (Score:5, Funny)
Verizon takes an arm and leg for text messages every month, so amputation by text message isn't anything new.
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The appendix is actually quite useful as spare tissue for various reconstructive surgeries, such as on the bladder.
</offtopic>
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The appendix is actually quite useful as spare tissue
It's where you put the things that wouldn't fit the main body of the text?
Who else already learned how to do this through... (Score:2)
...MySpace? I especially like the embedded video clips.
Seriously, teaching someone how to do an operation through text messages will do the opposite of instilling trust in patients. I wonder if he came out of the operating room and said to the worried family, "Mrs Robinson, The operation went great, just like was written in the text message! I am going to stay at my Holiday in Express now."
Re:Who else already learned how to do this through (Score:3, Insightful)
You did notice the part where it said that he was in Africa without access to advanced medical facilities and that the boy was only days away from dying without this operation, right? But hey, better to let a kid die when you can save him than embarrass your profession through expediency, I guess.
This reminds me of the commercial... (Score:4, Funny)
...where this guy's doctor was talking him through doing an appendectomy. "It's very straightforward."
seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
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...if you're a mechanic.
People on both sides of the lines have a thorough understanding of the anatomy involved.
This is more akin to someone texting the wiring pattern for a foreign network cable. You might have done cable wiring before... you just need to know which order this particular operation is done in.
Man... (Score:4, Funny)
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Only the US pay for incoming texts AFAIK... So never go anywhere with a civilised communications infrastructure - there, they'd be able to amputate bits of you for free!
Please don't tell Blue Cross... (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll be all over this method of reducing healthcare costs!
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You know, unless you're in the Congo.
Google does this (Score:2)
Just text "amputation instructions" to 466453. I've used it twice, it works pretty well.
Don't.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Surgeon able to follow instructions from surgeon! (Score:4, Insightful)
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The story is that this was a procedure which is difficult even in a fully equipped hospital with bountiful access to donated blood which the doctor performing the surgery wasn't 100% familiar with and yet the kid lived in spite of being in a third world country with minimal tools and very little blood to work with -- all thanks to the ability to fact check with a more skilled surgeon several thousand miles away (and a pretty talented physician on the ground).
20 years ago, this would not have been possible.
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no I think in that order will do.
May cut his assignment in half.
if you travel by way of Darful then may not even have to visit the DRC.
-nB
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So use a laptop with an IM client. Magnify the text to make it more readable. Might even be useful to exchange photos or videos.
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Eh, medical terminology tends to compress quite well (take a look at how most doctors write prescriptions or notes). I think medicine uses at least as many acronyms and initialisms as IT does, only difference being the medical ones are frequently in Latin.