Life-Saving Instructions Delivered by Text Message

I know you've used your mobile phones to send simple messages:

--Honey, its 11pm. y rnt u home yet?

Or we've asked CHACHA to serve up the answer to our insatiable appetite for trivia:

--How many bones in the human body?

But have any of you used Text messaging to save a life? Well that's what happened a few weeks ago in Africa. A volunteer surgeon with the organization Doctors Without Borders performed a life-saving amputation on a sixteen year old boy using surgical instructions sent to him by a colleague in Britain.

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the teen initially received an amputation just below his shoulder after a hippopotamus bit him. The boy, identified only as J, had suffered from a severe infection after the partial amputation and had just a few days to live, Dr. David Nott, told the newspaper.

Nott said he did not know how to amputate the infected part, and he asked his colleague Meirion Thomas for instructions via phone messages. Nott was unable to reach Thomas by phone or e-mail, but Thomas did respond to a text while away on vacation. Thomas sent two replies containing instructions and encouragement.

Thomas called the procedure "easy" and wished Nott luck, but Nott told the Daily Mail that he believed the teen stood an 80% chance of dying.

Nott said that the potential for complications was "enormous." With a pint of blood, a scalpel, forceps, and minimal anesthetic, Nott removed the entire shoulder, including the scapula. The young man is expected to make a full recovery despite the disarming procedure.