A 55-year-old man from Iraq who suffered devastating injuries in a bomb blast seven years ago has undergone a major surgery at Paras Hospitals, Gurugram, where doctors successfully removed a bomb fragment from his intestine and reconstructed a significant part of his abdomen.
This was Annas Hasan Ahmed Alsaadani’s 22nd surgery in seven years.
The blast had caused major injuries to the right side of his body, damaging a huge area of the abdomen and hip muscles.
While the primary repair was done in his home country, he later went to Jordan for treatment and underwent 21 surgical procedures there.
However, one fragment from the blast was still lodged in his large intestine. Besides that, repeated bowel surgeries had led to the development of an enterocutaneous fistula — an abnormal connection that develops between the intestinal tract or the stomach and the skin — causing the contents of the intestines to leak through to the skin.
In Gurugram, he was treated by Rakesh Durkhure and Alok Gupta, both senior consultants, General and Laparoscopic Surgery Department, at the hospital.
“This is a particularly heart-wrenching case as it highlights the tragedy of war, and its devastating impact on the lives of people. The patient came to India after undergoing 21 surgeries. Despite that, a foreign body was still lodged in his abdomen. Such was his condition that he did not have any muscles on the right side of the abdomen and the back, with doctors in Jordan having reconstructed the area using nine meshes,” explained Dr. Durkhure at a press conference recently.
Dr. Gupta added, “It took a mammoth six and a half hours to finish the operation, involving a surgical incision into the abdominal cavity, followed by removal of the diseased part of the intestine along with the bomb fragment. Another challenge was to reconstruct his abdomen after removing the infected mass of meshes. We are happy to have successfully performed this procedure, which will make a positive difference in the life of Mr. Alsaadani, who suffered immensely for the last seven years.”
The patient, who is responding well to treatment, hopes to move on in life after getting over his health woes.
“I have faced numerous struggles, which cannot even be put in words, over the last seven years. My life as I knew it was finished after that ill-fated bomb blast. This team of doctors has given me a new lease of life and hope of restarting a new life with this surgery,” Mr. Alsaadani said.
