Accident victim flies back to Kolkata with detached ear, gets it fixed

KOLKATA: A 27-year-old youth from Barrackpore, who works with a construction company in Jabalpur, flew around 1,500km to Kolkata to save his right ear detached in a road accident. After undergoing a successful surgery at a private hospital in Kolkata, he is ready to fly back to his workplace.

A sharp object had pierced through Ratnadip Nath’s right ear pinna around 1.30am on May 5 when he was returning to his home in Jabalpur and his bike hit an island at a traffic point.“My ear got severed by almost 90%. I was rushed to a local medical clinic in Jabalpur where I was told to look for better medical facility. I requested them to clean the wound and bandage the ear tightly so that it doesn’t come off,” said Nath.
Nath had booked a morning flight the same day to Kolkata as he had to cast his vote. “I believed that I would get better medical facility in Kolkata. So, I decided to fly to Kolkata,” added Nath. From the airport, the youth first rushed to his home. His parents were shocked to see the condition of his ear. He was taken to a local private hospital where he was asked to go somewhere else with better medical infrastructure. Finally, he was admitted to Apollo Gleneagles Hospital.
“Without wasting time we had wheeled him into the operation theatre. On opening the bandage we found the ear pinna was hanging from a single blood vessel with small amount of tissue at the lower end,” said Dr Abhik Ghosh, an ENT surgeon, who operated Nath with his team at the hospital.
While debriding the wound, doctors found some pieces of glass shards and mud inside his ear cavity and also blood clot. They micro-sutured the detached ear pinna and the procedure took almost three hours. The ENT surgeon said if Nath was late by six hours, he would have lost his ear.
“The chance of vascular damage was very high given the condition of his ear. Besides, cartilage injury could have caused complications,” said Ghosh.