Doctors at Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital here today removed after operation an iron arrowhead lodged in the chest of a 55-year-old tribal man for the last forty years.
Mansinh, who lives in Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh, told the doctors that he was shot with the arrow during a quarrel four decades ago, when he was about 15 years old.
The wooden shaft of the arrow was pulled out afterwards (and the wound was treated with traditional herbal medicines), but the iron arrowhead remained inside.
It gave him no trouble until recently when he complained of pain in the chest. X-ray image revealed the iron object inside the left side of chest, so local doctors sent him to MY Hospital.
Dr Sumit Shukla, an associate professor at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital, said it was nothing short of a wonder that the iron piece - about 4 inches in length - caused no infection all these years.
A team of seven doctors, consisting of Dr Ankur Maheshwari, Dr Sonia Mojej and Siddharth Dubey and others performed the operation which lasted three hours.
Mansinh was doing well and would be discharged from the hospital within a week, Dr Shukla said.
