Leonid Rogozov 1961 Self Appendix Operation

In 1961, Leonid Rogozov, 27, was the only surgeon in the Soviet Antarctic Expedition. During the expedition, he felt severe pain in the stomach and had a high fever. Rogozov examined himself and discovered that his appendix was inflamed and could burst at any time. With a local anesthesia, he operated himself to remove the appendix. An engineer and a meteorologist assisted surgery.....

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While on a 1961 expedition in the frozen Antarctic, 27-year-old Soviet doctor Leonid Rogozov saved his own life by performing an operation on himself to remove his dangerously inflamed appendix.

Suffering from fever and a pain in his right lower belly, he quickly diagnosed appendicitis. However, he knew that no aid plane would be able to cope with the blizzards or reach such a remote spot in time to evacuate him, so, as the only doctor at the station, he set about conducting an auto-appendectomy on the night of April 30. He was assisted by an engineer and the station’s meteorologist, who handed him the medical instruments and held a small mirror at his belly to help him see what he was doing.

After administering a local anesthetic of novocaine solution, Rogozov made a 4 3/4-in (12-cm) incision in his lower abdomen with a scalpel. Working without gloves and guiding himself mainly by touch from a semi-reclining position, he proceeded to remove the appendix before injecting antibiotic into the abdominal cavity and closing the wound. The self-operation took 1 hour 45 minutes, and saved his life. If he had left it another day his appendix would have burst. His stitches were taken out a week later and he made a complete recovery.

Even 50 years later, the place where Leonid Rogozov performed his surgery is a pretty inhospitable place. Novolazarevskaya Station, run by the Russians in Antarctica, looks like this on a summer day.