British Airways flight 032, bound for London, was still on the tarmac in Hong Kong when Prof Angus Wallace heard the passenger announcement dreaded by many medics: “If there is a doctor on board, would they please make themselves known to cabin staff.”
Wallace, then the head of orthopaedic surgery at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, answered the call, as did Dr Tom Wong, a medical resident at the time.
It was 1995; the pair were asked to provide assistance to 39-year-old Paula Dixon, who had fallen off a motorbike en route to the airport. The problem seemed to be some bruising and a potentially fractured right forearm, which the doctors splinted after takeoff.
But an hour into the flight, Dixon developed chest pain and her condition began to worsen. The doctors diagnosed her with a life-threatening tension pneumothorax – a collapsed lung caused by air trapped in the chest cavity – and likely rib fractures.
They couldn’t receive immediate advice from ground staff, so Wallace decided to operate. The aircraft’s medical kit had a urinary catheter and lignocaine, a local anaesthetic, but “there the routine e
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