Ramanisblog

Tag: Plastic surgery

  • Brain Cancer Plastic Surgery In Vedic India

    The Ancient Indians of the Vedic times were well advanced in Medical Sciences.

     

    There were Physicians, Surgeons.

     

    Suhusrutha was a leading practitioner of Medicine and was also a Medical scientist.

     

    The sick were treated by the following methods.

     

     

    1.Mani.

     

    There are references to a sort of Crystal which was used to cure the sick.

     

    Brain Surgery in Harappa
    Brain Surgery in Harappan Civilization Image Credit.The Hindu.

    2.Manthram.

     

    Mantras or the Mystical Letter/s, words were also a part of treatment.

     

    Even to day there are practitioners of this form of Medicine, who cure hepatitis by having a copper bowl filled with water in between the patient and

    the Practitioner, he keeps a needle in this water, chants some Mantras silently, the color of water changes,indicating the level of infection and once the water becomes clear, the patient becomes fully cured.

     

    There are people who treat Snake and Scorpion bites with this type of treatment.

     

    3.Aushadham.

    Aushadham means Divine Medicine.

     

    The first Medicine this system recommends in Food.

     

    Regulation of food and special foods cure one of illnesses.

     

    Then comes herbs,wild and common.

     

    Lakshmana was cured when he fell unconscious by the use of Sanjeevini, a rare herb

    .

    The early Hindus were also adept at Surgery.

     

    They performed regular Surgery, Cancer Surgery and even Plastic surgery.

     

    ““Surgery is the first and the highest division of the healing art, pure in itself, perpetual in its applicability, a working product of heaven and sure of fame on earth” – Sushruta (400 B.C.)”

     

    According to Hindu mythology, the creator of the Universe, Lord Brahma, was the first teacher to make a compilation of Ayurvedic texts which he later abridged into eight parts , with medicine (Kayachiktsaya) and surgery (Shalya tantra) as the main subjects.

     

    It is believed that Brahma propagated this knowledge through Daksha Prajapati who in turn taught this science to the Aswini Kumars ( the twin sons of the Sun God ).

     

    The Aswinis imparted the science to Indra. Upto this time, the knowledge of Ayurveda was known only to celestial personalities.

     

    It is believed that it was Lord Indra who passed on this knowledge of Ayurveda, the “science of life”, to sages and rishis ( mortals ) , the first pupil being Bharadwaja. He, in turn, taught this subject to others including Atreya.

     

    He, it is believed, lived in the period 700 – 600 B.C. and became a renowned teacher at Taxila.

     

    Lord Vishnu is also believed to have been associated with ancient medicine.

     

    It is said that several sages approached the Lord and begged of Him to help them save humanity from diseases and suffering. In response to their plight and prayers, he ordered the churning of the ocean of milk with the aid of ” vasukis ” and ” asuras “.

     

    Dhanvantari then came out of the ocean with the pot of ” amrita ” in his hands.

     

    Sushruta, one of his disciples attained great proficiency in surgery, lived some time in 400 B.C. His famous writings known as “Sushruta Samhita” are devoted essentially to surgery.

     

    But that was not all: he also wrote on medicine, pathology, anatomy, midwifery, ophthalmology, biology and hygiene.

     

    From the available records, it is evident that major abdominal operations were also carried out. Vesical calculi, even those days, were common and hence the operation for the removal of vesical calculi was well described in Sushruta Samhita. Surgical procedures for anal fistula, fractures, extraction of foetus in abnormal presentation, amputation, excision of tumours, repair of hernia and couching of cataract were also known.

     

    Rhinoplasty was commonly performed for restoration of severed or cut noses as punishment for certain offences such as adultery.

     

    He carried out plastic surgery, giving his patients a new nose or a new ear by the process of skin grafting. Dr.Hirschberg of Berlin pays his tribute to ancient Indian surgery by writing “The whole plastic surgery in Europe took a new flight when these cunning devices of Indian workmen became known to us”.

     

    Sushruta described many sharp surgical instruments emphasizing the need to get them made of “pure, strong and sharp iron”.

     

    Several types of knives and needles have been described depending upon their use and tissues concerned.

     

    He taught his pupils how to make incisions on the abdomen by using a pumpkin for demonstration purposes. It is believed that the following ingenious method for suturing the severed ends of intestine was employed.

     

    The cut ends of the intestine were apposed to each other and big black ants, collected specifically for this purpose were made to bite the apposed ends and their heads severed when their pincers had closed. T

     

    hus the pincers remained ‘in situ’ due to rigor mortis retaining the cut ends of the intestine in apposition for some time.

     

    The heads and the pincers of the ants being organic matter got digested in due course of time, not unlike the catgut of the present day surgery.

     

    His works were translated into Arabic by the 8th century A.D. and called ” Kitab-i- Susrud “.

     

    There is adequate evidence that in ancient India, anatomical study of the human body was carried out.

    To quote the appropriate translation, “Any one, who wishes to acquire a thorough knowledge of anatomy, must prepare a dead body and carefully observe and examine all its parts”.

     

    The method of study was to submerge the body in water and allow it to decompose: an examination of the decomposing body was carried out at intervals to study structures, layer by layer, as they got exposed following decomposition.

     

    Brain Surgery.

     

    Scientists at the Anthropological Survey of India claim to have found evidence of an ancient brain surgical practice on a Bronze Age Harappan skull.

    The skull, believed to be around 4,300 years old, bears an incision that indicates an “unequivocal case” of a surgical practice known as trepanation, says a research paper published in the latest edition of Current Science.

    Trepanation, a common means of surgery practised in prehistoric societies starting with the Stone Age, involved drilling or cutting through the skull vault, often to treat head injury or to remove bone splinters or blood clots caused by a blow to the head.

     

    “The Yantras
    (blunt instrument) and Shastras
    (sharp instruments) are
    the main tools of surgeon and the Sushruta had the knowledge of
    101 Yantras and 2
    0 Shastras. Even though he was agree with the fact
    that if the more instruments are required then it can be developed as
    per need
    86
    . The shape of the Yantras and Shastras are further
    modernized to compete with the surgery in modern era but the basic
    theme a
    nd functions are remained same as before. The classification
    of instruments in to the Yantras
    (blunt instruments) and Shastras
    (sharp instruments) is the basic concepts of Sushruta. No any such
    type of classification of instrument is found in the modern su
    rgical
    text books. As per Sushruta the hand is the main and important
    instrument amongst all which hold the key position till date.

    Exhaustive details at .

    http://www.ijrap.net/admin/php/uploads/627_pdf.pdf

     

    Surgerytimes

     

    http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/history-and-culture/brain-surgery-during-harappan-civilisation/article2118388.ece

     

     

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  • Surgeons ‘Leave Things Inside The Patient’ 4000 a Year

    Surgical Indifference.
    “Although the data we utilized captured surgical never events resulting in malpractice claims, many do not reach legal process and are then only voluntarily disclosed, with little coordination among reporting bodies,” he writes in the Surgery article.
    What the data do suggest is that we do know a bit about which doctors are most likely to experience never events. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, doctors who had already experienced malpractice claims. Younger doctors also had higher odds of settling malpractice claims for never events. Washington Post

    A Study by Johns Hopkins Hospital , found that the Surgeons leave  foreign objects such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient’s body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week..

    This is related to US where the medical Norms are supposed to tight,

    In India, it is non-existent.

    Even if it is,  it is a well-kept secret.

    I have seen surgeons administering Anesthesia  when the patient suffered a Lung related disease and could not stand a particular anesthetic  for they never referred the History of the patient.

    There are cases where a wrong part is operated upon..

    The instance quoted in the article is peanuts for us in India.

    .Patients in India or their relieves need to be more vigilant in Hospitals and should demand to know the Surgical Procedure, Anesthesia to be used, and check for any abnormality after the surgical procedure and react immediately without standing on form of Behavior or fear of reprimand by the Hospital or the doctor.

    I have some posts where Doctors have forced a patient to undergo operations because he has to complete his monthly target in Surgery!

    Story:

    BACKGROUND

    Risk factors for medical errors remain poorly understood. We performed a case–control study of retained foreign bodies in surgical patients in order to identify risk factors for this type of error.

    Full Text of Background…

    METHODS

    We reviewed the medical records associated with all claims or incident reports of a retained surgical sponge or instrument filed between 1985 and 2001 with a large malpractice insurer representing one third of the physicians in Massachusetts. For each case, we identified an average of four randomly selected controls who underwent the same type of operation during the same six-month period.

    Full Text of Methods…..

    The researchers, reporting online in the journal Surgery, say they estimate that 80,000 of these so-called “never events” occurred in American hospitals between 1990 and 2010 – and believe their estimates are likely on the low side.

    The findings – the first of their kind, it is believed – quantify the national rate of “never events,” occurrences for which there is universal professional agreement that they should never happen during surgery. Documenting the magnitude of the problem, the researchers say, is an important step in developing better systems to ensure never events live up to their name.

    “There are mistakes in health care that are not preventable. Infection rates will likely never get down to zero even if everyone does everything right, for example,” says study leader Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But the events we’ve estimated are totally preventable. This study highlights that we are nowhere near where we should be and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

    For the study, Makary and his colleagues used the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a federal repository of medical malpractice claims, to identify malpractice judgments and out-of-court settlements related to retained-foreign-body (leaving a sponge or other object inside a patient), wrong-site, wrong-procedure and wrong-patient surgeries. They identified 9,744 paid malpractice judgments and claims over those 20 years, with payments totaling $1.3 billion. Death occurred in 6.6 percent of patients, permanent injury in 32.9 percent and temporary injury in 59.2 percent.”

    http://www.reddit.com/tb/1iepsz

    Source:

    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021721

  • Worst Plastic Surgery cases-Images.

    Science often results in ghastly aftermath.

     

    From Jocelyn Wildenstein, a US$4 million monster, to –who else?– Michael Jackson, meet these ten plastic surgery addicts, terrible examples of really bad plastic surgery gone wrong.

     Hang Mioku: the korean plastic surgery addict who injected cooking oil into her own face

    Disfigured face.
    Face after Plastic Surgery.

     

    One of the most famous cases of awful plastic surgery gone wrong, Hang Mioku, a 48 year-old woman from South Korea, became so addicted to plastic surgery that she was left unrecognisable after her obsession led her to inject cooking oil into her face. She had her first plastic surgery procedure when she was 28. Following operation after operation, her face was eventually left enlarged and disfigured, and the surgeons she visited refused to carry out any more work on her and one suggested that her obsession could be a sign of a psychological disorder. So Hang resorted to injecting cooking oil into her face. It became so grotesquely large that she was called “standing fan” by children in her neighbourhood – due to her large face and small body.

    As Hang’s notoriety spread she was featured on Korean TV, viewers seeing the report took mercy on her and sent in enough donations to enable her to have surgery to reduce the size of her face. During the first procedure surgeons removed 60g of foreign substance from Hang’s face and 200g from her neck. After several other sessions her face was left greatly reduced but still scarred and disfigured, a true challenge for korean plastic surgery.

    Distorted faces after surgery.
    Disfigured faces after Plastic Surgery.

     

    Known by the press by the nickname of “The Bride of Wildenstein” –a reference to The Bride of Frankenstein–, Jocelyn Wildenstein has allegedly spent almost US$4,000,000 on cosmetic surgery over the years, ending up as one of the worst and most famous cases of plastic surgery addiction. But who did that happened?

    Once upon a time, in the late 70’s there was a beautiful women named Jocelyn Wildenstein. Jocelyn really had it made. She was a fresh-faced mother of two and married to an extremely rich art dealer. That is until she caught her husband in bed with a 21 year old Russian model. Now, any normal person would just leave her husband and take all of his money with her, right? Not Jocelyn Wildenstein! Instead she decided to win back her husbands love and make herself more beautiful by going under the knife. Well, her husband left her anyways, but Jocelyn will always have her plastic surgeon.

    http://www.oddee.com/item_96587.aspx