Surgeon carries out amputation by text

A British surgeon in the Democratic Republic of Congo saved the life of a teenage boy by amputating his shoulder, using instructions texted to him by a colleague.

David Nott, 52, a surgeon at a London Hospital, was working with the charity Médecins sans Frontières when he came across the badly injured 16-year old.

The teenager's left arm had been so badly damaged, either in an accident or as a result of the fighting in the country, that it had already been amputated. But the flesh and bone that had remained had become badly infected.

"He was dying," said Nott. "He had about two or three days to live."

The doctor realised the boy's best chance of survival was amputation of the collar bone and shoulder blade. The only problem was that it was an operation Nott had not done before. But he remembered that one of his colleagues at home had performed the procedure.

"I texted him and he texted back step-by-step instructions," Nott said. "I had to think long and hard about whether it was right to leave a young boy with only one arm in the middle of this fighting."

"But he would have died without it, so I took a deep breath and followed the instructions to the letter."

Such an operation, if performed in the UK, would require every sort of modern medical product on hand if things went wrong.

"The boy had an 80% chance of dying and the potential for things to go wrong was enormous," said Nott.

"We only had one pint of blood, one scalpel and I wasn't sure if the anaesthetic was strong enough."

Despite the basic conditions, the operation was a success and the teenager made a full recovery.

More than 5 million people have been killed in Congo since the early 1990s, when the Rwandan conflict spread into what was then Zaire.

Lesson Plan

Tell students the article is about a man who works as a volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Establish the meaning of volunteer and charity. Show the photo, minus headline, and elicit that the man is a surgeon. - 4 mins

Tell students they are going to work as a volunteer for a year. What will they do? Go through ideas as a class - eg work with homeless people in their country or help build a school for street children in Kolkata. Students discuss plans with a partner. Feedback. - 10 mins

Write the headline. Studnets speculate what happened in the news story. - 4 mins

Give out the following sentences and go through any unknown words. Hand out copies of the article. Students read and choose the correct word to fill the blank. - 12 mins

1. David Nott operated on ___.
   1. a baby boy
   2. a teenager
   3. two teenage boys
2. The surgeon needed to operate on the boy's ___
   1. hand
   2. arm
   3. shoulder
3. Nott's colleague ___ the instructions.
   1. texted
   2. texted and phoned
   3. texted and e-mailed
4. The boy only had a few ___ to live.
   1. hours
   2. days
   3. weeks
5. It was the ___ time that Nott had done this operation.
   1. first
   2. second
   3. third
6. When Nott did the operation he had ___ medical products.
   1. a lot of
   2. a small number of
   3. no
7. The boy is now ___.
   1. very ill
   2. a bit better
   3. much better

Students read again with dictionaries and answer the following questions. - 10 mins

1. Which charity did Nott work for?
2. Was this the first operation for the boy?
3. Why did Nott decide to do the amputation?
4. What medical products did Nott have?

Divide the class into A/B pairs. The A students are David Nott and the B students are journalists. Put the B students into groups to think of questions to ask Nott. For example, How did you feel before the operation? etc. Put the A students into similar groups. They think of possible information about him - how he felt at the time, etc. In A/B pairs the students then do the interview. - 15 mins