6 ms·

Is it ever a good idea to perform self-surgery?

37 points by CarolineW 10y ago

overcast 10y ago
I've cut out ingrown toenails many times. Nothing a little frontier medicine can't handle :)
- ajsdpo9 10y ago
  I've done the exact same thing - not worth it. I self-treated for years. It was usually quite painful and frequently led to infection (which always healed itself after a couple weeks). Best thing I ever did was finally go to the GP and get it surgically taken care of. 30mins in the doctors office, less pain that treating it myself, and it's never come back. Saying all this my health care doesn't cost me anything but even if I had to pay, in hindsight, I would.
  - v64 10y ago
    One doesn't often get a chance to commiserate publicly about ingrown toe nail problems, so I'm going to take the opportunity to very enthusiastically second this. OP, go see a podiatrist ASAP. After numerous dealings with infected and painful to walk on toes, I went through a simple in office procedure where the podiatrist numbed my toes, snipped off the edges of the nail, then put some chemical at the nail base so they wouldn't grow back. I haven't thought about my toe nails since and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's improved my quality of life not having to deal with those issues anymore.
    - overcast 10y ago
      I just altered my trimming style of cutting too short, to leaving some actual nail there. Problem solved.
      - ajsdpo9 10y ago
        Yeah I should've have mentioned in my original comment but obviously there are varying degrees of this. My situation was not something I could ever fix myself, only fix temporarily. The only solution was killing a section of the root with a chemical.
    - kjs3 10y ago
      I had that done after I crushed a toe and the nail-bed was damaged such that it basically immediately in-grew. Looks a bit odd, but problem definitely solved.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Same, do this and get professional podiatry nail clippers (they look like wire cutters and the actual brands they use in practices cost ~$50-a few hundred, look on Amazon and eBay). They're super sharp and can cut straight or curved, and can get under the nail without hurting much. The doctor killed part of my nail bed which prevented really bed recurrence, and with some maintenance, careful filing of the under-side and edge of the nail (with a very thin special podiatry file), it doesn't come back. Pronation issues also exacerbate ingrown nails by placing too much pressure on one side of a toe, especially prevalent in the biggest toe. For that, go to a running store and talk to them about insoles. For me, the SuperFeet insoles in Brooks Ghost running shoes make my feet, back, knees, hips, ankles, and metatarsals feel vey noticeably better.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    80% trichloroacetic acid is readily available (generally for skin peels and wart removers) and can be used to chemically destroy the nail matrix. If you don't mind not having a toenail on that toe, you could probably do it yourself at home with a bit of prep.
js8 10y ago
I wonder why they don't mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov It seems like in that case, it was a good idea.
- junto 10y ago
  I too thought it this guy. Operating on himself to remove his appendix whilst so far from any civilisation was a seriously amazing feat of human determination to survive.
Kenji 10y ago
Am I mistaken or did the article not answer the question at all? It just describes some processes, risks and examples. Most of them common knowledge of the practical man in the 21st century.
- paublyrne 10y ago
  Yes, a strange article. If your first thought was that it is probably rarely a good idea, and that there there will probably be complications, your first thought was correct.
- mikeash 10y ago
  It does answer the question near the end: "...given people who perform this type of surgery are often in life or death situations, it is sometimes worth the risk." But this seems so obvious that the question is hardly worth asking in the first place.
fitzwatermellow 10y ago
In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, Academy-Award winner Meryl Streep gave a shout out to Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Earning the title of: "the first woman ever to take a bullet for our country." From wikipedia: Sampson fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls. Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully healed because the other musket ball was too deep for her to reach. On April 1, 1783, she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson.
viach 10y ago
It is like to do plumbing work by yourself. Always has unexpected and potentially catastrophic consequences.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  Plumbing is super easy and very hard to mess up. There's no reason to be messing around with copper any more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene
Kenji 10y ago
One could say that woman had balls =)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743 and marked it off-topic. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Considering that the woman in question literally had musket balls embedded in her thigh, I think Kenji's response is better described as a good pun than uncivil or unsubstantive.
iamthepieman 10y ago
This is insane. Medical Licensure was just starting to take form in the early 19th century. I wonder if Liston had anything to do with it. A notable 19th century surgeon ... Robert Liston ... is the only surgeon to have achieved a 300% mortality rate as a result of an operation ... the patient, his assistant (who lost a finger while holding the patient down) and an observer died. The first two from infection of their wounds and the observer from fright, believing he had been cut when really it was only his coat that had been cut.
- vilhelm_s 10y ago
  Note that Liston was a very celebrated surgeon -- he was a professor of surgery and developed several important procedures and tools, some of which are still in use today. Things were a lot more speedy and dangerous before the invention of disinfectants and general anesthesia!
theophrastus 10y ago
If i had a supply of lidocaine i'd be sore tempted to dig out some superficial lumps (lipoma). There's one which removed would probably provide a decent void for some nifty implant.
BurningFrog 10y ago
A friend of mine knocked out a wisdom tooth on himself, saving ~$1k. Hammer and screwdriver, if I remember the story right.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  He was lucky, that could have been a lot more expensive his way.
dyim 10y ago
I broke my right pinky about a year ago, and splinted it up at home with the help of a med school friend. It came in a little crooked, but I saved a few thousand in medical bills! It's not like I need my right pinky to sell software, play guitar, ski, or do anything fun :) . I've always wondered if it made more sense to go to a veterinarian for broken bones / torn muscles... I went to physical therapy for a rotator cuff issue, and it wasn't cheap!
- justbees 10y ago
  I also broke my right pinky and splinted it myself around 6 years ago! I wouldn't consider that surgery, but I felt like I did the exact same thing that they would've done in an emergency room minus getting an actual x-ray. (I guess I can't know if it was actually broken since I didn't get an x-ray, but the right side of my hand was completely black/purple and the pinky finger was swollen to about the size of my thumb.) I taped my whole hand for the first week for stability and then slowly removed fingers from the tape as I felt like it was healing (swelling going down - color returning to normal). After the bandages and splint were off my finger wouldn't bend inward and it wouldn't fully straighten without applying pressure using my other hand. I started doing my own "physical therapy" on it whenever I had some free time to force it to straighten/bend. It took a few months before I could bend it by itself to touch my palm but now it's about 99% functional as compared to my other pinky.
Someone 10y ago
"Less than 3 minutes" wasn't that fast for an amputation, back when surgeons had lots of practice doing it. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey claims "he operated on Marshall Jean Lannes and amputated one of his legs in two minutes." http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm has pictures of instruments used and even an instruction poster from the period. Don't try this at home, though; according to http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm, only about a third of people who had a limb amputated survived.
DannyB2 10y ago
I'm surprised they didn't mention Scrotum Self Repair. http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp

37 points by CarolineW 10y ago

overcast 10y ago

I've cut out ingrown toenails many times. Nothing a little frontier medicine can't handle :)

ajsdpo9 10y ago
I've done the exact same thing - not worth it. I self-treated for years. It was usually quite painful and frequently led to infection (which always healed itself after a couple weeks). Best thing I ever did was finally go to the GP and get it surgically taken care of. 30mins in the doctors office, less pain that treating it myself, and it's never come back. Saying all this my health care doesn't cost me anything but even if I had to pay, in hindsight, I would.
- v64 10y ago
  One doesn't often get a chance to commiserate publicly about ingrown toe nail problems, so I'm going to take the opportunity to very enthusiastically second this. OP, go see a podiatrist ASAP. After numerous dealings with infected and painful to walk on toes, I went through a simple in office procedure where the podiatrist numbed my toes, snipped off the edges of the nail, then put some chemical at the nail base so they wouldn't grow back. I haven't thought about my toe nails since and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's improved my quality of life not having to deal with those issues anymore.
  - overcast 10y ago
    I just altered my trimming style of cutting too short, to leaving some actual nail there. Problem solved.
    - ajsdpo9 10y ago
      Yeah I should've have mentioned in my original comment but obviously there are varying degrees of this. My situation was not something I could ever fix myself, only fix temporarily. The only solution was killing a section of the root with a chemical.
  - kjs3 10y ago
    I had that done after I crushed a toe and the nail-bed was damaged such that it basically immediately in-grew. Looks a bit odd, but problem definitely solved.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Same, do this and get professional podiatry nail clippers (they look like wire cutters and the actual brands they use in practices cost ~$50-a few hundred, look on Amazon and eBay). They're super sharp and can cut straight or curved, and can get under the nail without hurting much. The doctor killed part of my nail bed which prevented really bed recurrence, and with some maintenance, careful filing of the under-side and edge of the nail (with a very thin special podiatry file), it doesn't come back. Pronation issues also exacerbate ingrown nails by placing too much pressure on one side of a toe, especially prevalent in the biggest toe. For that, go to a running store and talk to them about insoles. For me, the SuperFeet insoles in Brooks Ghost running shoes make my feet, back, knees, hips, ankles, and metatarsals feel vey noticeably better.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  80% trichloroacetic acid is readily available (generally for skin peels and wart removers) and can be used to chemically destroy the nail matrix. If you don't mind not having a toenail on that toe, you could probably do it yourself at home with a bit of prep.

js8 10y ago

I wonder why they don't mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov It seems like in that case, it was a good idea.

junto 10y ago
I too thought it this guy. Operating on himself to remove his appendix whilst so far from any civilisation was a seriously amazing feat of human determination to survive.

Kenji 10y ago

Am I mistaken or did the article not answer the question at all? It just describes some processes, risks and examples. Most of them common knowledge of the practical man in the 21st century.

paublyrne 10y ago
Yes, a strange article. If your first thought was that it is probably rarely a good idea, and that there there will probably be complications, your first thought was correct.
mikeash 10y ago
It does answer the question near the end: "...given people who perform this type of surgery are often in life or death situations, it is sometimes worth the risk." But this seems so obvious that the question is hardly worth asking in the first place.

fitzwatermellow 10y ago

In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, Academy-Award winner Meryl Streep gave a shout out to Deborah Sampson who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Earning the title of: "the first woman ever to take a bullet for our country." From wikipedia: Sampson fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls. Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully healed because the other musket ball was too deep for her to reach. On April 1, 1783, she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Paterson.

viach 10y ago

It is like to do plumbing work by yourself. Always has unexpected and potentially catastrophic consequences.

MustardTiger 10y ago
Plumbing is super easy and very hard to mess up. There's no reason to be messing around with copper any more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene

Kenji 10y ago

One could say that woman had balls =)

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743 and marked it off-topic. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.
- cperciva 10y ago
  Considering that the woman in question literally had musket balls embedded in her thigh, I think Kenji's response is better described as a good pun than uncivil or unsubstantive.

iamthepieman 10y ago

This is insane. Medical Licensure was just starting to take form in the early 19th century. I wonder if Liston had anything to do with it. A notable 19th century surgeon ... Robert Liston ... is the only surgeon to have achieved a 300% mortality rate as a result of an operation ... the patient, his assistant (who lost a finger while holding the patient down) and an observer died. The first two from infection of their wounds and the observer from fright, believing he had been cut when really it was only his coat that had been cut.

vilhelm_s 10y ago
Note that Liston was a very celebrated surgeon -- he was a professor of surgery and developed several important procedures and tools, some of which are still in use today. Things were a lot more speedy and dangerous before the invention of disinfectants and general anesthesia!

theophrastus 10y ago

If i had a supply of lidocaine i'd be sore tempted to dig out some superficial lumps (lipoma). There's one which removed would probably provide a decent void for some nifty implant.

BurningFrog 10y ago

A friend of mine knocked out a wisdom tooth on himself, saving ~$1k. Hammer and screwdriver, if I remember the story right.

ktRolster 10y ago
He was lucky, that could have been a lot more expensive his way.

dyim 10y ago

I broke my right pinky about a year ago, and splinted it up at home with the help of a med school friend. It came in a little crooked, but I saved a few thousand in medical bills! It's not like I need my right pinky to sell software, play guitar, ski, or do anything fun :) . I've always wondered if it made more sense to go to a veterinarian for broken bones / torn muscles... I went to physical therapy for a rotator cuff issue, and it wasn't cheap!

justbees 10y ago
I also broke my right pinky and splinted it myself around 6 years ago! I wouldn't consider that surgery, but I felt like I did the exact same thing that they would've done in an emergency room minus getting an actual x-ray. (I guess I can't know if it was actually broken since I didn't get an x-ray, but the right side of my hand was completely black/purple and the pinky finger was swollen to about the size of my thumb.) I taped my whole hand for the first week for stability and then slowly removed fingers from the tape as I felt like it was healing (swelling going down - color returning to normal). After the bandages and splint were off my finger wouldn't bend inward and it wouldn't fully straighten without applying pressure using my other hand. I started doing my own "physical therapy" on it whenever I had some free time to force it to straighten/bend. It took a few months before I could bend it by itself to touch my palm but now it's about 99% functional as compared to my other pinky.

Someone 10y ago

"Less than 3 minutes" wasn't that fast for an amputation, back when surgeons had lots of practice doing it. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey claims "he operated on Marshall Jean Lannes and amputated one of his legs in two minutes." http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm has pictures of instruments used and even an instruction poster from the period. Don't try this at home, though; according to http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm, only about a third of people who had a limb amputated survived.

DannyB2 10y ago

I'm surprised they didn't mention Scrotum Self Repair. http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp