An Indian man carried a bullet in his heart for two months before undergoing a surgery for its removal Tuesday.
Bharat Sharma, a 32-year-old native of India's eastern state Uttar Pradesh, was shot twice (one in the waist and the other in the heart) by robbers in a bank theft in July. Doctors performed surgery on him and removed a bullet from his waist. However, they were apprehensive about operating on his heart, fearing he would die in surgery.
However, this Tuesday Sharma traveled to the western city of Ahmedabad for the surgery to remove the .20 calibre bullet settled near the apex of his heart's left ventricle.
According to the cardiac surgeon Anil Jain, he and his team of two carried out a "complicated" three-hour operation in order to remove the bullet and stitch the heart up. "The bullet was stuck horizontally between the valves," said Jain, from the SAL private hospital in Ahmedabad, reports Indian daily The Hindu citing Agence France-Presse. "Also, since the patient had lost lots of blood after the incident, we had to be very careful," he said.
Jain also said that the bullet had lodged just a millimetre away from puncturing the left heart chamber. "It is very rare that a bullet is so close and the person does not die," he told Zee News India.
Jain added that Sharma's survival for two months with the bullet was "pure destiny." Sharma is in the intensive care unit and will be able to return to work in a month.
