Evan O'Neill Kane (1861-1932) was an American surgeon best known for self-operating on appendicitis under local anesthesia in 1921. Nevertheless, this was not the only intervention of this kind. During his career, the surgeon performed three major operations on himself, including an amputation.
Born April 6, 1861, Evan O'Neill Kane was the son of Major General Thomas L. Kane, founder of the town of Kane, Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane, physician. In the early 1880s, he in turn decided to pursue a career in medicine and graduated in Philadelphia in 1884. He then became a surgeon and spent most of his career at Kane Summit Hospital founded with his brother and mother. /P>
That being said, Evan O'Neill Kane was one of those surgeons who was "wary" of general anesthesia, aware of the risk and potential complications inherent in this procedure. He only operated in this way when he deemed its use really necessary. Otherwise, he preferred local anesthesia . During his career, he performed various surgeries on himself to prove to others that these operations could be performed without general anesthesia.
He first operated on himself in 1919, by amputating one of his own fingers who was infected. Then, two years later, he had to undergo a much more serious and important operation:an appendectomy . By this point in his career, the surgeon had already performed more than 4,000 of these operations and had decided that it was more convenient and safer to perform them under local anesthesia. However, he struggled to convince his patients. Now he had a volunteer:himself.
On February 15, 1921, the day of the operation, Evan O'Neill Kane then supported his upper body with a pillow and set up mirrors in front of him to get a correct view of the situation during the intervention. He injected himself with novocaine and operated while chatting with his team. He finally managed to remove his own appendix and asked his brother (also a doctor) to close it. Not bad for a surgeon who had lost a finger two years earlier.
Then, in 1932, aged 70, he operated on for an inguinal hernia contracted six years earlier while riding a horse (pictured above).
During this complicated operation, he continued to laugh and joke before returning to his seriousness during the most dangerous part of the operation which involved performing a suture under his abdominal muscle, a few millimeters from important blood vessels. The operation lasted one hour and fifty-five minutes. He then returned to operate thirty-six hours later.
Kane eventually died a few months later of pneumonia unrelated to these operations.
