New Delhi (PTI): A man survived after a five feet long and two inches wide iron rod pierced his body and remained embedded for one-and-a-half hours. The rod entered Supratim Dutta’s body from the front when his car rammed into material piled at a construction site here on Saturday. Dutta, 23, is stable and recovering at AIIMS.

Five days after the accident, Supratim Dutta, 23, is stable and recovering at AIIMS.

the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

The rod entered Dutta’s body from the front when his car rammed into material piled at a construction site on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road on Saturday. He managed to call up his family and friends after the accident and was later rushed to AIIMS, where a surgery was performed.

“When he was brought to the hospital, we saw that an angle (rod) had pierced through the upper part of his abdomen and had come out of the thorax (chest) on the left side of the body,” said Dr M.C. Misra, head of the department, Trauma Centre, AIIMS.

“When he was brought here, we saw that the rod had missed his vital parts, like the kidney and the heart,” said Dr Biplab Misra, another surgeon who was a part of the team that operated on Dutta. Misra said this was the main reason for Dutta’s survival.

Another reason was that the rod was not immediately extricated from his body.

A doctor, who did not want to be identified, explained that when the rod pierced Dutta’s body, important blood vessels got punctured, but he did not die from blood loss as the rod itself stanched the blood flow.

A team of anaesthetists, the Trauma Centre specialists and surgeons, and workers from the AIIMS blood bank struggled for nearly six hours to save Dutta’s life.

“Several of his organs, including the stomach and spleen, had been damaged,” Dr Misra said.

The rare surgery, in which one wrong move could have cost the patient his life, was successful and Dutta is expected to lead a normal life.