Doctors amputate man's foot on Philadelphia train tracks

NORTHEAST PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A man is recovering from utterly dramatic emergency surgery performed on railroad tracks in Northeast Philadelphia.

It was in the middle of the night when Doctors Megan Stobart-Gallagher and Melissa Kohn of Einstein Medical Center got the call.

"It was a little surreal I think it's a situation where you act and think about it afterwards," Stobart-Gallagher said.

A pedestrian on the train tracks in Northeast Philadelphia was hit by a CSX freight train.

His leg was pinned under a wheel and needed to be amputated.

The doctors are part of Einstein's emergency medicine team called upon for situations like this.

"You want to make sure that the patient is going to make it through this, you're there to help patients," Kohn said.

The patient was a 46-year-old man and the train tracks was their operating room.

It was a far cry from the controlled environment they are used to, but both doctors are trained in performing operations in the field.

But performing this amputation in these conditions was a first for them.

"Both of us physically crawled under the train in between the rails," Kohn said.

"It was the smallest work environment I've ever had to work in, the harshest conditions I've ever worked in, and it was definitely above 100 degrees under the train," Stobart-Gallagher said.

And they were working with limited tools.

The trapped man had to have his foot removed from the ankle down.

A small saw was one of the main medical instruments used.

The man was conscious, but heavily sedated so that he wouldn't feel the pain.

"We used both a surgical saw and a Gigli saw," Kohn said.

It turned out to be a successful surgery that only lasted about 10 minutes.

It was the first time the two doctors ever performed an amputation in the field and it saved a life.

"It was the right thing to do at the right time and getting that patient out when we did probably saved his life," Stobart-Gallagher said.