A 29-year-old technician at a windmill survived 80% burns caused by a massive electric shock at his workplace in India, in a recovery that took six weeks and 17 surgeries, according to theBangalore Mirror.

Bishnu Prasad had more than seven years of experience in the windmill industry. His job was primarily to fix the technical snag in the turbines in Wind World India Limited.

While working on one of the turbines, Prasad was hit by an arc flash as the electric power was generated at 30 kilowatts. His coworkers immediately took him to a nearby hospital in an unconscious state. When the doctors there could not do much, he was shifted to a second hospital.

Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, Dr Upendra Kumar, managing director of the hospital, said, "He reached the hospital almost eight hours after the incident and had suffered a neurogenic shock."

He regained consciousness 30 hours after he was admitted, but was in a state of shock. Dr Raghvendra B K, Consultant Intensivist at the hospital to the newspaper, "We had to put him through a series of psychiatric counselling session as he lost his grit to live. He went through a series of complications including a lung infection in between but now he is out of all that. He got back his zeal to live when he saw his younger brother who came down to take care of him. In most cases we keep the patient in isolation so that he does not contract infection but in his case we ensured that people constantly came and spoke to him so and cheer him up so that he does not go into depression."

Prasda’s company employed a full-time person to take care of the patient and also give him anything that he requires, Dr Raghavendra said.

He had to go through a few plastic surgeries as well. The surgeon, Dr Kamal Kumar, told the newspaper, "We had to mentally prepare him for a laborious procedure as the degree of burns was severe. In a case when both the layers of the skin, dermis and epidermis are affected we call it a third degree burn. If both the layers are affected it is considered as third degree burns. In his case, 30 per cent was third degree, 20 per cent was second degree and 10 per cent was first degree burns. We have treated all the wounds and have to do a final grafting procedure which is due next week."

As of early December, Prasda was likely to be discharged in 20 days.

Source: www.bangalgoremirror.com