A Photo of a surgeon who fell asleep with his head on the operating table after he performed surgery for 20 hours non-stop has gone viral and the doctor is being hailed a hero.
Chinese orthopaedic surgeon Luo Shanpeng performed emergency surgeries on 6 patients in a row without taking a break. After the 6th surgery which took 8 hours, the doctor laid his head on the operating table while still holding the arm of the patient he had just reattached and he blacked out.
A nurse took the photo and shared on WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform, and it blew up immediately.
The nurse wrote:
Seeing this makes my heart ache.
Luo works for the No. 6 People’s Hospital of Guiyang in south-eastern China’s Guizhou Province. He told Guiyang Evening News that he had already performed five operations when a patient was rushed into the hospital at around 6 pm on January 3.
The patient’s right arm had been mangled in a meat mincer and nearly torn off from his body.
Luo said he decided to carry out emergency surgery for the patient despite the fact that he had already worked over time. ‘Otherwise, the patient would lose his arm.’
Commenting on the picture, Luo said: ‘I wanted to shut my eyes and have a rest. I didn’t expect to fall asleep.’
Luo added that it was an honour to become a surgeon and the happiest thing for him was to see his patients recovering.
