When Apurba Kumar Goswami got admitted to AMRI Hospital in Mukundapur, under general surgeon Dr Susenjit Prasad Mahato  in the third week of May, the treating doctor and his team could not have imagined the surprise that awaited them inside the 34-year-old patient. The patient had Situs Inversus Totalis (SIT), where the internal organs are transposed on the opposite side of the body, a rare anomaly.

In Goswami’s case, while his liver and gallbladder were found on the left, his stomach and spleen were inclined towards the right. Even his heart was placed on the right side of the chest, instead of the usual left positioning. The patient came to the hospital with compliant of acute pain on the left side of his stomach.

Dr Mahato was initially baffled but after conducting ultrasonography and other tests, he traced the pain to the pain to the patient’s gallbladder, which had got infected and was filled with pus. Since his gallbladder was on the left, which is usually found in the right side of the body, below the liver, Dr Mahato had faced initial difficulties in understanding the disease.

While his inflated gallbladder had some stones the organ was pressing on to his bile ducts, he was also detected with jaundice, causing further problems. In order to surgically treat Goswami’s gallbladder, the doctors had to address these issues first and….