Half of man's body cut off in surgery to save his life

Jul 11, 2007, 4:34 GMT

Singapore - Doctors cut off half of a man's body in complex surgery to save his life, after an infection from sores caused by spending years in a wheelchair, news reports said on Wednesday.

The procedure was carried out on Amri Mohd Sama, a 41-year-old paraplegic, at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) when the patient lapsed into a coma and was in danger of dying.

'The doctor told me I had two choices - to cut off the bad part of my body or suffer and die,' The Straits Times quoted Amri as saying. 'I picked the operation because it gave me a 50-50 chance to live.'

Called a hemicorporectomy, the operation involved removing the legs, genitalia, urinary system, pelvic bones, anus and rectum, doctors said.

It took 15 hours to amputate the lower half of Amri's body.

Dr Heng Chin Tion created a colostomy, or opening into the colon from outside the body, to re-direct waste, the report said. He created another opening to drain urine from the abdomen, bypassing the bladder.

Then Dr Matthew Chang, a consultant with the orthopaedic surgery department, and his team cut off the blood vessels and carried out the amputation.

Similar operations have taken place in the United States. Many surgeons are reluctant to perform them because of the possibility of death partly from the procedure and partly from the underlying disease.

Amri told the newspaper he has no regrets over the operation that took place in May.

'Before the surgery, I was always sick,' he said. 'Although I could not feel the pain of the bed sores, they were bad and smelled.'

Amri was paralyzed from the waist down after a motorcycle accident 21 years ago.

He lives with his brother, a technician. Amri will move around on his wheelchair as he did previously and is going home on Friday.