AsiaWireA Chinese doctor has proved just how far medical professionals are willing to go to save their patients’ lives – by sucking urine out of an old man’s bladder.
Vascular surgeon Zhang Hong showed true dedication in upholding the Hippocratic oath when the medical emergency broke out on a China Southern Airlines flight to New York on Tuesday.
Cabin crew put out a desperate call for a doctor on board after an old man with a swollen stomach complained of being in severe pain.
You can watch the life-saving moment here:
On assessing the elderly passenger, Hong quickly determined the man had around a litre of urine trapped in his bladder but was unable to urinate.
The flight still had six hours to go before it would land in New York, and Hong feared a potentially fatal rupture was imminent.
Hong, who works as head of the vascular surgery at Jinan University’s First Affiliated Hospital, explained:
The pensioner’s abdomen was bloated, he could not sit still and was sweating a lot.
He was going into shock and may have suffered a risk to his life if we didn’t tend to him urgently.
His family said he had a history of prostate enlargement, so we suspected this was causing urinary retention.
AsiaWireWith time potentially running out and no medical equipment on board, Hong put together a makeshift catheter from a piece of plastic tubing, a syringe from the plane’s medical kit, a milk carton and some sticky tape.
The surgeon initially tried to use the syringe to extract the urine, but quickly discovered the needle was too thin. It was then that he realised the lengths he would need to go to, to save the passenger.
Using his mouth and a straw, and spitting the urine into a wine bottle, he extracted 800 millilitres of wee in about 37 minutes.
AsiaWireWhile the mere idea of sucking someone else’s urine out of their bladder sounds completely out of the question for most of us, it was a matter of life and death in Hong’s eyes, and no one can take away from his commitment to saving lives.
Afterwards, Hong said:
There was no other way. I didn’t think too much about it. I only wanted to help him extract the urine retained in his bladder.
Saving lives is a doctor’s instinct.
What an absolute hero.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.