A Russian break dance champion has had his leg amputated and almost lost the other after doctors delayed treating him for a week after a road accident, Life News said on Tuesday.
Yevgeny Smirnov, 25, holder of 30 break dancing trophies, was seriously injured when a car cut in in front of his motorscooter in the Black Sea resort of Lazarevskoye on May 1. Smirnov spun off the highway and fainted after the collision.
The car driver fled from the scene of the accident but was later found by Smirnov’s friends and the police, his friend Anna Kharlamova said. A criminal investigation has been opened into the road accident.
An ambulance took him to the nearest hospital in Lazarevskoye where doctors diagnosed a double open shin-bone fracture.
Smirnov’s friends insisted he be transferred to the regional center of Krasnodar, which has a bigger hospital than the one he was first taken to. Local doctors kept turning them down until Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov stepped in.
“It was a real effort to have Zhenya [short for Yevgeny] transferred to the Krasnodar regional hospital which has the best doctors in our region,” Kharlamova said.
“The mayor organized a special cortege for Zhenya who was in a very critical condition, to take him to Krasnodar hospital,” she said.
The delays in treatment resulted in gangrene infection and his leg had to be amputated. The gangrene then began spreading to his second leg, but doctors in Krasnodar carried out surgery in a bid to stop the infection spreading and stitched the second leg on Monday night, Kharlamova said.
“The patient’s condition is grave but stable,” said Olga Gugneva, an emergency care doctor in the Krasnodar hospital. “He has come to, doctors have stitched his leg.”
Smirnov will have to spend another two or three days in emergency care and will then be transferred to a regular ward, Kharlamova said.
Meanwhile, Smirnov’s friends are raising money for the break dance champion, whose parents are dead.
“In the next two-three years, he will need money to provide for himself until he recovers his athletic shape and returns to coaching younger sportsmen,” Kharlamova said.
Smirnov’s friends have also organized a fund-raising concert to be held in Sochi on May 19 in support of the break dancer. Fifteen dance groups, singers, entertainers and rappers will perform at the event.