10 Fascinating Facts About

Surgery
10A Surprisingly High Number Of Patients Wake
Up During Surgery

If you ever talk to a surgeon about undergoing a surgical procedure, he’ll go to great
lengths to assure you that you won’t feel a thing. While that’s largely true as
general anesthesia should take care of that, it hasn’t worked as intended quite a few
times.

According to one study, about 1 in 1,000 patients wake up during surgery in the
United States every year. Although most of those cases occur at the beginning or end
of the operation, it happens quite a bit in the middle, too. Around half of all patients
who wake up during surgery also end up developing PTSD and depression, which is
quite understandable as it sounds like a horrific experience.
It’s made worse by the paralytics administered with anesthesia before the surgery as
they render the patients unable to alert the surgeons. Pain may not be involved in all
cases, though the mere act of seeing someone cutting you up and doing things inside
your body is enough to mess with the brain for a long time. [1]

9Anesthesia Was Initially Unpopular (And Outright

Banned In Some Places)

Photo credit: huntingtontheatre.org

It’s difficult to imagine, but surgeries were done without any type of anesthesia for the
overwhelming majority of human history. Things like medicinal plants and alcohol
were used, though a drink can hardly numb the pain of, say, someone cutting up your
leg with an axe.

In light of that, you’d think that doctors would have jumped at the idea of anesthesia
when it was first developed. As is the case with most of history, however, common
sense isn’t how we used to do things back then.
Initially, anesthesia was an unpopular procedure in places around the world,
especially in the US. While some surgeons cited the ridiculous “it doesn’t feel like
surgery unless the patient can feel everything” excuse, others went with the old
“satanic influence” card.[2]

There were some legit reasons, too, like the possibility of death due to overdose. Most
surgeons back then didn’t know the proper amount of anesthesia to be administered.

8The ‘Two-Hearts’ Surgery

Photo credit: stanford.edu

We’ve grown up to believe that the maximum number of hearts that can possibly
reside in a human body is one. It makes sense, too, as the heart is one of the most
important organs of the body and is perfectly capable of performing its functions
alone.
That’s not the case in some acute cases of late-stage heart failure in which the heart
requires additional support to function. Medical researchers could have come up with
an external setup—like dialysis—to help with it, but they figured that just sticking
another heart in there would do the trick, too.[3]

Known as a heterotopic heart transplant, it involves taking a heart from a donor and

putting it alongside the existing heart for assistance. While the procedure isn’t as
widely used in the US anymore (as we have better techniques to do the same thing
now), it’s still a possible surgical option if it’s needed.

7Placebo Surgery

The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating aspects of medical science. While we
currently have no idea about the extent to which it works, we know that it can be
effective.
It has been successful even when the patients are told that they’re getting a placebo.
Research suggests that the placebo is as effective with surgical procedures as with
day-to-day ailments.[4]

Many studies have found that just telling patients that they went through a surgery,
even if they didn’t, is enough to have the same effects as those experienced by
patients who actually underwent an operation. It only works with certain surgical
procedures like a knee arthroscopy as you’d still have to undergo a real surgery for
more complicated conditions (like heart failure).

6Human Head Transplant

Photo credit: gogonews.cc

When we talk about transplants, certain organs simply don’t seem to qualify for the
procedure. The head is one of them as the ability to put someone’s head on another
person is straight out of science fiction.

While it’d be dishonest to say that we already have that tech, it’s surprisingly close to
being developed. Some researchers have already made huge strides in making it
happen in recent times, and it may not be long before we’re finally able to do it.
The basic idea is exactly what you’d imagine: Just cut off a head from a donor, place
it on someone’s torso, and hope it sticks. We were quite close to making it happen,
but the first volunteer for the procedure recently backed out, which was probably a
sensible decision on his part.[5]
5Unborn Surgery

Photo credit: The Independent

Being born seems to be one of the most basic qualifications for being able to get a
surgery. Apart from the incredible difficulty of operating on an unborn baby, it sounds
like something straight out of the future. That is, of course, if you don’t include the
recent surgery done on a baby in the womb in the UK.

The baby was suffering from spina bifida—a birth condition wherein the spine and
spinal cord aren’t properly formed in the womb. The mother had the option to either
wait for the baby to be born and then fix the problem, get the doctors to operate in
utero, or just terminate the baby (which most of us won’t go for).
She opted for the in utero surgery as the condition is much more difficult to cure once
the baby is fully developed and born. In a four-hour operation, the surgeons sliced up
the mother’s womb, operated on the baby’s spine, and put it all back together like
nothing happened. The baby was born in April 2019 with no signs of the condition. [6]
4Surgeons Leaving Instruments Inside Is Ridiculously
Common

Photo credit: lifehack.org

Even if it’s a staple of surgeon jokes around the world, you’d think that accidentally
forgetting surgical instruments inside a patient during an operation isn’t that common.
After all, surgeons are some of the most skilled and qualified medical professionals
around.

If someone can open up a body, fix whatever’s wrong inside, and close it back up as a
part of their daily job, it’s safe to assume that they have the presence of mind to not
leave a pair of tweezers inside. Surprisingly, that’s not the case at all.
Across the globe, surgeons frequently leave a wide variety of objects inside their
patients, including forceps, surgical masks, and needles. There are many reasons, such
as more than one surgeon being involved in the operation or simply not keeping track
of their surgical inventory.[7]
3Using A Tooth As An Eye

Photo credit: abcnews.go.com

As of now, we don’t have a surgical procedure to transplant the human eye. While

some parts of the eye can be transplanted, replacing the whole eye with that of another
person is still some way into the future.

What we do have, however, is a way to put a tooth into the eye to restore vision. It
may sound like something straight out of a bad sci-fi horror movie, but the procedure
—known as osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis—has been around for a long time.
It involves making a hole in the tooth, placing a prosthetic lens in it, and putting the
tooth into the eye to serve as the cornea. It does look a bit horrifying, though it has
helped to restore vision for quite a few patients with damaged corneas. As the tooth is
from the same body, there’s a minimal chance of the body rejecting the tissue and
causing problems later.[8]
2Growing A Jaw On The Back

Photo credit: BBC

When a 56-year-old German man lost a part of his lower jaw to cancer, he had two
options: live the rest of his life without a jaw or go for an experimental technique
developed by researchers at the University of Kiel. He went with the latter and
became the first patient in history who had a jaw grown on his back.

They used the model of his head to create a titanium cage resembling his jaw, filled it
with bone mineral blocks, and coated it with bone marrow. They also filled the cage
with a protein to accelerate bone growth and implanted it under his right shoulder
blade.
To everyone’s surprise, the jaw developed like a normal jaw for a few weeks. Then it
was removed and grafted onto his face. He quickly redeveloped the ability to chew,
though he still didn’t have any teeth. It was some time before it could be used like a
normal jaw.[9]
1We Still Don’t Know Why Anesthesia Works

Anesthesia has been one of the most important medical discoveries in our history.
Before it, patients had to be completely conscious and in excruciating pain during
surgery, which wasn’t fun for anyone involved. Due to anesthesia, operations are now
much quieter affairs.

Even so, we still have little idea about why anesthesia works. The mechanisms of the
brain that make us enter a deep state of unconsciousness under anesthesia—no matter
what happens—are a complete mystery to scientists. In essence, a patient under
general anesthesia could be understood to be in an artificial coma, though that’s about
all we know about it.
That’s why anesthesiology is a whole science on its own and anesthesiologists are
some of the most skilled and in-demand medical professionals around. Moreover, it
ties into the larger mystery of consciousness itself. [10]

Understanding what anesthesia does to the brain would take us one step closer to
answering one of the biggest questions of life: “What part of the brain makes us
conscious and self-aware?”