Curious case of Badrilal Meena

In one of the most complex surgeries in medical history, surgeons at Faridabad’s Asian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) have successfully extracted 92 pins from a man’s body. Some 55 pins are still lodged in his body and doctors said they will decide next round of surgery once the patient’s wounds are healed.

Badrilal Meena (56), a resident of Kota and an employee of the Indian Railways, who is diabetic, was admitted to the AIMS on June 24 with the complaint of difficulty in swallowing food and breathing. Before getting admission to the AIMS, the patient who  had lost 30 kilograms in 10 months

had approached many hospitals, but they refused to admit him as his condition was termed highly complex. Doctors declared that he won’t survive.

With most of the pins being embedded in his neck, doctors found it difficult to operate on him with several  pins found in the vital nerves, arteries and organs like respiratory, food pipe, esophagus and carotid artery (which supplies blood to our brain).

However, the AIMS doctors took up the challenge. A team of experts from the AIMS, including ENT, vascular surgeon, general surgeon and anesthesia, performed two surgeries to remove 92 pins.

Dr lalit Mohan Parashar, Director of ENT department at AIMS, said, “When Badrilal came to us, he condition was very serious and chances of his survival were bleak, but we decided to go ahead with the operation. We carried out a CT scan, besides an endoscopic procedure for proper diagnosis and we were stumped to see over 150 pins lodged in the vital parts of his body.”

Dr Parashar said, “After analysing the patient and studying his medical history, we found that he is suffering from psychiatric illness.

It is yet to be established whether he himself inserted pins in his body or someone else did this.”

“The medical team was extra cautious while removing pins from the carotid artery and vocal cord as a small error would lead him to coma,” Dr Parashar added.

Doctors said the pins may have been inserted long time ago as there is no fresh wound visible on his body. There are scar marks on the surface, but the wounds caused by inserting the pins have healed.

When family members were enquired about this but they said that they were unaware about how this could have happened. Badri lal’s son Rajendra said, “For the last 10 months my father was not keeping well. In the last four months, my father had lost too much of weight and was in fragile health. He cannot eat food and talk.”

Another major challenge that the surgical procedure offered was the use of anesthesia in Badri lal’s case, said Dr Adil Rizvi, a cardiac surgeon. “In this case we used tracheotomy procedure and ensured that the pins be removed with great precision because neck is a vulnerable structure and he has pierced all his blood vessels, if the flow of blood is disrupted it can be fatal.”

First surgery was performed on June 29 to remove pins from his neck which posed one of the greatest threats to his life. Entire surgery procedure took six hours and the doctors can retrieve 91 pins. Whereas second surgery was performed on July 2, they can remove one pin from his stomach.

“There are still few more pins which are left. After a few weeks, we will take those pins out from his body. Though our hospital receives numerous challenging medical cases each day but this case was a unique one. I feel proud that our doctors again showed courage and managed to perform this highly complicated surgery. We are submitting this case to Ripley’s Believe It or Not and limca Book of Records to accept it and recognize the feat that we have achieved,” said Dr NK Pandey, the Chairman and Managing Director of the hospital said.