July 29, 2007
Cell phones light up operating room during blackout
The light from the cell phone screens allowed surgeons to complete an emergency appendix operation during a blackout in a city in central Argentina, reports Reuters.
"Leonardo Molina, 29, was on the operating table on July 21, when the power went out in the Policlinico Juan D. Peron, the main hospital in Villa Mercedes, a small city in San Luis province.
"The generator, which should have been working correctly, didn't work," a hospital spokesman, whose name was not given, told TN television news station.
"The surgeons and anesthetists were in the dark... A family member got some cell phones together from people in the hallway and took them in to provide light," he said."
A similar incident occured in Vietnam last March - Vietnamese doctors use mobile-phone light to finish surgery
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