DIY Brain Surgery, Do Not Try this at Home!

C.S. Magor — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:22:11 -0700

Henry Marsh, British neuro-surgeon and medical consultant travels to the Ukraine twice a year to perform free operations on patients at a clinic run by Ukrainian surgeon Igor Petrovich. Budgetary constraints have meant that Mr. Marsh has not had access to medical equipment which is standard issue elsewhere. He has made use of a battery powered Bosch drill for many of his operations which are performed with his patients fully awake.

The battery powered Bosch drill (which has gone flat during surgery on more than one occasion) was the idea of Igor Petrovich and apparently works similarly to the $60,000 drill that Marsh uses in England. His Ukraine surgeries are performed under local anesthetic due to a lack of trained anesthesiologists in the region in which he is operating. Working with local anesthetic has at least one advantage, Marsh can talk to his patients while he is drilling. In this way he can be certain that he is not causing damage.

Source: The Times Online