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SCMP Reporter

A WOMAN was recovering in hospital in Britain yesterday after a makeshift in-flight operation on a journey from Hong Kong using a coat hanger, sticky tape, some brandy and a bottle of mineral water.

  Paula Dixon, 39, may owe her life to the prompt action of two doctors, Hong Kong-born Tom Wong and Professor Angus Wallace.

  They realised she was not suffering from slight pain after a road accident on her way to Kai Tak airport, but had two fractured ribs and a life-threatening collapsed lung.

  Mrs Dixon had been knocked off a friend's motorcycle on the way to the airport. She had been in the territory for 10 days staying with her sister Kathleen.

  A friend Barbara Murray, who was travelling with her, had gone on ahead in a car with their luggage.

  Although her arm was cut, Mrs Dixon turned down medical attention at the airport to make sure she caught her flight last Saturday night.

  As their aircraft sat on the tarmac Ms Murray noticed her arm was swelling fast and called cabin staff to help.

  'I realised I had a bit more than just a sore arm,' said Mrs Dixon, of Aberdeen.

  A stewardess who happened to be a trained nurse asked the captain to call for a doctor.

  British Airways Flight 032 was about to take off when the announcement came over the public address system: 'Is there a doctor on board?'   First to arrive at row 53 was 30-year-old Dr Wong, a senior houseman at Stracathro Hospital, Brechin on Tayside in Scotland who had been visiting family in the territory for a fortnight's holiday.

  Then Angus Wallace, 46, Professor of Orthopaedic and Accident Surgery at the Queen's Medical centre in Nottingham arrived.

  'At the time the pain only seemed to be in her arm, which was quite badly bruised so we gave her some painkillers,' said Dr Wong yesterday.

  The initial and quick diagnosis was a broken arm so to avoid delaying the take-off the two put her arm in a rubber splint padded with a Hong Kong newspaper.

  'I was relieved,' said Mrs Dixon. 'But I still felt a bit queasy. I was given painkillers but I still felt rough. Barbara was very worried and was mopping sweat off my brow.'   But 70 minutes into the 14-hour flight the real injury made itself evident.

  'I bent to take off my shoes and felt an excruciating pain in my left side,' Mrs Dixon said.

  'We were asked to see this woman again, who by this time was complaining of breathing difficulties and was clearly getting much worse,' said Dr Wong.

  'The professor thought it might be a collapsed lung and asked me to examine her to see if I agreed with the diagnosis.

  'The noise of the plane engines and the very unusual circumstances meant we couldn't be sure, although the patient was showing clinical signs consistent with a collapsed lung.'   Professor Wallace gave her morphine from the aircraft's first aid kit as an anaesthetic.

  'Before I did so, I checked her chest and discovered her left lung had collapsed. It was putting pressure on the right lung,' he said.

  'Her condition had deteriorated and she was in pain. Her windpipe had deviated to the right.'   The professor then told her starkly: 'I am going to have to operate or you could die.'   Two passengers were asked to move so Mrs Dixon could lie out straight and stewardesses rigged up blankets for privacy.

  The two doctors assembled their operating kit - one bottle of Evian water, one coat hanger, one roll of Sellotape, a pen top, a pair of scissors and a bottle of brandy to sterilise the 'instruments'.

  'That was all there was to hand,' said Dr Wong. 'It was the most unusual operation I have ever taken part in.

  'We gave her oxygen and we rigged up a chest drain,' said Professor Wallace.

  'But we needed something long and thin to introduce the catheter into her chest and one of the stewards suggested a coat hanger.

  'I cut a hole in her chest cavity with the scissors and used the coat hanger to push it through.

  'We sterilised it all with five-star brandy and when the operation was over I drank the rest. I can tell you I needed it.'   They took a catheter from the first aid kit, placed it on the end of the wire coat hanger and inserted it through muscle tissue into her chest.

  The other end of the catheter was placed in the water as a valve and air trapped in her chest was expelled. The sticky tape was used to stick the tube to the patient's chest.

  'I last put in a chest drain two years ago,' said Professor Wallace.

  'But I have never performed in such conditions.'   Mrs Dixon's condition improved over the next 10 minutes and she was given painkillers for the rest of the fairly uneventful trip home.

  'As soon as we'd done it, the patient clearly felt a lot better and was very relieved. I'm glad to hear she is now doing well,' said Dr Wong.

  Yesterday as she lay in hospital near Heathrow Airport recovering Mrs Dixon said: 'I'm eternally grateful to them both. I am feeling weak but I am going to be all right.'   Conscious throughout the operation she said she felt like meat on a butcher's hook as the coat hanger was inserted.

  'Those two big heroes really saved my life,' she said.



Nip of brandy and coat hanger saves woman on BA 032