Any accident can happen in space, and astronauts must be prepared for it. A group of doctors conducted an exercise in 2006, operating on a volunteer in microgravity conditions. What did they do to him? They removed a tumor.
The team was led by the French surgeon Dominique Martin, and the intervention was carried out in an Airbus A300 plane that was conditioned to recreate the conditions of space. It had the collaboration of the European Space Agency, the French National Center for Space Studies and the company Novespace.
Philippe Sanchot, the volunteer patient had a benign fatty tumor on the right forearm. On the ground, he was given a local anesthetic, and then everyone flew on the Airbus A300.
Martin, two other surgeons and two anesthetists operated on Sanchot, who was fixed on the plane’s operating table. The instruments They were held in place by powerful magnets.
The doctors required little less than 10 minutes to intervene on Sanchot, in microgravity conditions like those that exist in space.
The operation in conditions similar to those in space, a total success
The Airbus A300 flew over the Atlantic at an altitude of between 6,000 and 8,500 meters, making sudden descents with an inclination of 47 degrees within the path set in the form of parabolas.
“If we had had two hours of continuous weightlessness”, told Dr. Martin at the time, “We could have operated on an appendicitis.”
“All the data collected,” Martin said, “points to the fact that surgery on one person in space conditions it does not present insurmountable problems”.
As early as 2003, an artery of a weightless mouse was sutured, but it had never been done with a person. Until Sanchot underwent the operation.
Fortunately no astronaut has required a similar intervention. But it doesn’t hurt to try, especially thinking about future explorations to the Moon and beyond.