Cigarette packs patch up hole in chest

Rao Jiacang, the man with cigarettes on his chest

Never mind nicotine patches - a DIY patient is using cigarette packets to cover up a gaping hole in his chest.

Rao Jiacang plastered the packets over himself after running out of money for crucial heart surgery.

Somehow he has survived for ten years, despite his beating heart being gruesomely visible through the paper folds.


Rao Jiacang measures up

But he is now desperate for a donor to come forward to pay for proper treatment to cover over the wound measuring seven by three inches.

Part of his ribs and skin were hacked away by surgeons in 1998, hoping to remove part of his infected lungs.

But the 51-year-old, from Taining in China's Guangdong province, says he was unable to afford the rest of the treatment after stitches were taken out.

He said: "I had the operation in 1998. I was then laid up for almost five years but gradually got used to the wound, and since 2003 I have been back on my feet.

"But no-one would give me a job and people were scared of me with the big hole in my chest.

"Because of that, I haven't dared to go outside, in case people get frightened."

He says he keeps the plaster coverings sterile, and changes the cigarette boxes several times each day.

Local doctor Wan Fi said: "It's a miracle that Rao could have lived so many years with such a massive opening in his chest."

His friend Xi Lin, 35, who was present when the plaster was changed, said: "I did not know what to expect but then I saw a heart through the hole in his chest, and it was actively beating."

An estimated one in 8,000 people are dextrocardiac - that is, their heart is not on the left hand side of their body, but slightly to the right.



Well what can one say!!

You would have thought that once the surgeon's started the job they would have finished. Just shows you how lucky we are over here.