Guess Who? With Kevin

Inspired by Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story, Kevin has crafted a captivating series of “guess who” articles, which he’s generously sharing with our readers!

Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane was chief surgeon of Kane Summit Hospital in New York City. At age sixty he had been a surgeon for thirty-seven years. Like most physicians of great experience, Dr. Kane had become preoccupied with a particular facet of medicine.

His strong feelings concerned the use of general anesthesia in major surgery. Dr. Kane believed that most operations could and should be performed under a local anesthesia, for in his opinion the hazards of general anesthesia outweighed the risks of the surgery itself.

For example, Dr. Kane cited the surgical candidate with a history of heart trouble. In such a case, a surgeon may be reticent to operate fearing the effects of the anesthesia on the heart.

And of course there were those patients with specific anesthesia allergies who never awakened. Dr. Kane’s medical mission was to prove to his colleagues the viability of local anesthesia in most surgical procedures. And it would take a great deal of convincing.

Many patients were understandably squeamish at the thought of being “awake while it happens”. Others feared the possibility of the anesthetic wearing off during the surgery. Valid concerns to be sure.

To break down these psychological barriers, Dr. Kane would have to find a volunteer, a candidate for major surgery who would be willing to accept local anesthesia.

And someone did volunteer…

In his distinguished thirty-seven-year medical career, Dr. Kane had performed nearly four thousand appendectomies, so his next appendectomy would be routine in every way but one: Dr. Kane’s patient would remain awake throughout the surgery under local anesthetic.

The operation was scheduled for a Tuesday morning, February 15.

The patient was prepped, wheeled into the O.R. Local anesthetic was administered.

Dr. Kane began as he had thousands of times before, carefully dissecting superficial tissues and clamping blood vessels on the way in.

Locating the appendix, the sixty-year-old surgeon deftly pulled it up, excised it and bent the stump under. Through it all the patient experienced only minor discomfort.

The operation concluded successfully.

The patient rested well that night, and the following day his recovery was said to have progressed beyond that of the typical postoperative patient.

On the afternoon of the seventeenth, just two days after his surgery, the patient was released from the hospital and recuperated at home.

Dr. Kane had proven his point.

The risks of general anesthesia could be avoided in major operations; the potential of local anesthesia had been fully realized – thanks to the example of an innovative doctor and a very brave volunteer.

Oh, did I mention that this milestone surgery was performed February 15…1921? And did I mention that Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane and the patient who volunteered for the experimental procedure had a great deal in common?

They were the same man.

Dr. Kane – to prove the viability of local anesthesia in major surgery – had operated on himself!