The man who lost his crown
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Very early in my training, when I was on call on a Saturday morning, we had an emergency case to do.
Seems that some kid (19?) got involved in a bar fight. He insulted another guy, who just happened to be the Illinois State High School wrestling champ. Champ wasn't pleased, and knocked the kid to the floor. Then, he grabbed a cue ball, shoved it, or attempted to shove it into the kid's mouth - with a cue stick.
Massive, massive facial trauma.
Kid transported to local hospital where an oral surgeon on call did an emergency trach (probably saved the kid's life), and then he was brought to our place for definitive treatment.
His injures were impressive. He had a lacerated globe, multiple facial bone fractures and multiple dental injures, including one tooth that he had aspirated.
The opthamologists spent about two hours trying to repair the globe - I don't think that he ever recovered full vision in that eye. The oral surgeons spent about three hours fixing his Le Forte fractures (look it up) with plates and screws.
Finally, the chest cutter came and tried to retrieve the tooth. This was in the dark ages of bronchoscopy, and the only tools available were the scope and flexible forceps. The tooth had entered the kid's bronchus, occlusive surface down, so the roots were visible to the chest cutter. Every time he tried to grab the root, the tooth would slip out from the forceps, going farther and farther out into the lung.
He gave up after about an hour and a half of trying, and we ended the case about 6 hours later.
The kid ended up getting a pneumonia (duh) and needed to have his chest cracked to retrieve the tooth several days later. I wasn't involved with that, however.
Impressive. Today, the chest guy would put a balloon-tipped catheter past the tooth, inflate the balloon, and retrieve it that way - easy peasy.
