Former CNN anchor Miles O’Brien revealed his left forearm was amputated after an apparently minor injury put his life in jeopardy.
In a blog post on his personal website Tuesday, PBS science correspondent Miles O’Brien recounted the February 12 blow to his arm he suffered while on assignment in Asia and the medical emergency that followed.
Miles O’Brien was diagnosed with “acute compartment syndrome”, in which blocked blood flow in an enclosed space in the body can cause life-threatening consequences.
Part of his arm was removed in a choice between “a life and a limb”, Miles O’Brien said, quoting his doctor. He is grateful to be alive, the PBS reporter said.
Miles O’Brien has continued working despite the ordeal, PBS spokeswoman Anne Bell said.
Miles O’Brien revealed his left forearm was amputated after an apparently minor injury put his life in jeopardy
He covers science for PBS NewsHour and is a correspondent for public TV’s documentary series Frontline and the National Science Foundation’s Science Nation online magazine.
According to his blog, Miles O’Brien was securing cases filled with camera gear on a cart as he wrapped up a reporting trip to Japan and the Philippines. One of the cases fell onto his left forearm, he wrote, adding: “It hurt, but I wasn’t all <<911>> about it.”
The arm was sore and swollen the next day but worsened on the next, February 14, and he sought medical care.
Miles O’Brien did not detail where he was and PBS couldn’t immediately provide the information.
At the hospital, as his pain increased and arm numbness set in, a doctor recommended an emergency procedure to relive the pressure within the limb, O’Brien wrote.
“When I lost blood pressure during the surgery due to the complications of compartment syndrome, the doctor made a real-time call and amputated my arm just above the elbow,” Miles O’Brien wrote.
He typed the blog post with one hand and help from speech recognition software, he noted, and ended it with dark humor.
“Life is all about playing the hand that is dealt you. Actually, I would love somebody to deal me another hand right about now – in more ways than one,” Miles O’Brien wrote.
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The world’s first double leg-transplant patient has had his legs amputated, a Spanish hospital has confirmed.
The amputation was carried out after an unrelated illness forced the man to stop taking anti-rejection drugs, according to Valencia’s Hospital La Fe.
The hospital said treatment of the unspecified illness was “more urgent”.
The transplant was carried out in July 2011 by surgeon Pedro Cavadas, who also led a team that carried out the first double hand transplant in 2006.
The first double-leg transplant was carried out in July 2011 by surgeon Pedro Cavadas, who also led a team that carried out the first double hand transplant in 2006
The man who received the double leg transplant, who was in his 20s at the time and has not been named, initially lost his legs above the knee in a road accident.
Pedro Cavadas and his team of more than 50 at Hospital La Fe took more than 10 hours to attach the new legs, a procedure that included connecting nerves, blood vessels, muscles, tendons and bone structure.
The patient was expected to take immuno-suppressant drugs for the rest of his life, but had to stop because the medicine was complicating the treatment of an illness he contracted, doctors said.
“In these cases the protocol is that, if the transplanted organ is not a vital organ, it should be removed from the patient so as to allow treatment of the illness that is more serious and urgent,” the hospital said in a statement.
Pedro Cavadas is referred to as a “miracle doctor” by parts of the Spanish media for his pioneering procedures.
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Zsa Zsa Gabor only realized her leg had been amputated 18 months after the surgery when she tried to sit up and saw it was missing.
Zsa Zsa Gabor, 95, told her ninth husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt: “There is something missing” as the horror dawned on her.
Nobody had been able to tell the screen legend for fear it would cause too much upset, the New York Post reported.
Zsa Zsa Gabor only realized her leg had been amputated 18 months after the surgery
Zsa Zsa Gabor was unable to make the discovery herself because one hand is paralyzed and the other is too short to reach.
She has been in declining health since a car crash in 2002 and an accident in 2010 when she fell out of bed whilst trying to answer the telephone.
In January last year she had her right leg amputated above the knee after doctors found an infection and antibiotics failed to cure it.
Zsa Zsa Gabor is now confined to her bed at her Los Angeles mansion.
Prince Frederic von Anhalt admitted that along with not telling her about her leg, she “doesn’t know she gets food through the tube”.
He said: “It will only upset her. She was so glamorous always, and she is so vain.”
He also confessed to not informing her of the death of her friend Phyllis Diller last month as: “I don’t want to give bad news to my wife.”
Hungarian-born Zsa Zsa Gabor became a sex symbol in the 1950s and was known for her pithy comments on her colorful love life.
She once said: “I am a marvellous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.”
Frederic von Anhalt was recently appointed her temporary conservator after a court battle with her daughter Constance Francesca Hilton.
