A Shot in the Dark

  

 

The purpose of this blog is to provide some intriguing and, at times, amusing medical cases that I have encountered over many years of clinical practice in Cambodia, the UK and on the Isle of Man. I hope that they will be of interest to both medical and non-medical readers and I have pitched them primarily at a non-medical audience. Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions as I am new to the blogging community! Just to reassure you that any photographs I use have been taken with the consent of the persons depicted and do not allow their identification.

Continuing from last week’s theme of weapons, my story this week concerns a slightly more conventional one, albeit rather more old-fashioned, in the form of an arrow. As before, the circumstances surrounding the injury were unusual and took the form of an accident rather than a deliberate attack. In Cambodia it is not uncommon to find home-made arrows being used for hunting rats, frequently fired from some sort of crossbow (also home-made) and two people are usually involved – one to flush the rats out and the other to shoot them. The added incentive is that the rats are subsequently cooked and eaten and yes, they do taste a bit like chicken! On this particular occasion a couple of lads were hunting in a section of concrete drain and, unfortunately, the one doing the flushing from the far end of the drain did not move out of the way quickly enough when his friend shot the arrow which missed the rat, ricocheted off the concrete and lodged itself firmly in his face, narrowly avoiding his eye.

 He arrived at the hospital with the arrow sticking out of his face between his nose and his left eye, having lodged in one of his sinuses as shown on the X-ray below. As you can see, there is a nasty barb on the end of the arrow which makes it a little tricky to remove without creating further damage. He was fully conscious and had no other injuries and, after an operation to remove it, I am pleased to say that he made a rapid and uncomplicated recovery. I am sure he did not feel lucky at the time, but had the arrow hit a centimetre or so to the side, he would have lost his eye.

I will return to the theme of arrows in due course.