Cuban doctors save life of child with harpoon in abdomen

CAMAGUEY, Cuba, Mar 5 (ACN) An unusual event overturned Dr. Niurys Aguilar Ramirez's on-call duty on February 29 when she received Henry Cristian, a 13-year-old boy with a life-threatening harpoon in his abdominal area, at the Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital in this central-eastern Cuban city.

Without wasting a second, according to the first degree specialist in Anesthesiology and Resuscitation, they activated the emergency work team and everyone gave their best and made the procedure a success.

It took four hours and 15 minutes in the surgical room of the aforementioned hospital center, where a group of doctors performed the impossible, the miracle.

When we reached the abdomen, we found that he had an intestinal lesion and a vascular one, in the inferior vena cava, which is an important vessel that compromised the patient's life and we had to ask the specialists of the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Provincial Hospital who came quickly, so we are sure that the result we are showing today is the result of the effort of many people, Dayannelis Aguilar Atanay, a second degree specialist in pediatric surgery, said.

Young Daimel Rodriguez Lugones, head of the Anesthesiology Service, added that they went as support in the face of a major event and great was their surprise to find a very cooperative child who helped with the anesthesia interview and who fortunately did not move the foreign object in his body to avoid further complications.

He added that at all times they had the necessary materials to carry out their work such as plasmas, platelets, albumin and managed to keep his vital parameters stable, a super strong teenager who recovered every 30 minutes, several venous accesses were cannulated and large blood vessels and the small intestine were repaired.

For Taimí Cardoso Sanchez, Henry Cristian's mother, her heart has been beating faster for five days, receiving the call that would change the minute, the hours, the days has been, according to her words, a bitter experience where her worries and torments are diminished by the care received.

Today Henry talks and smiles, he tells how he placed the harpoon he made himself on a street light mast to take a picture of it and it went off.His evolution is favorable, soon he will go to play, to study to make his dreams come true, wherever he goes he will carry a scar that will remind him of a sad moment, but full of memories where brave hands put their knowledge, professionalism and love to give him back the most valuable thing in the universe: life.