Surgeon’s stolen special glasses are handed back
A SURGEON has been handed back his operating glasses just days after they were stolen from his car following an M.E.N. appeal.
Omar Masood needs his ‘loupes’ to perform life-saving transplants on severely-ill adults and children.
The dad-of-two, who carries out kidney and pancreas transplants at Manchester Royal Infirmary and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, is one of a handful of surgeons in the UK able to perform extremely complex organ retrieval operations.
Last week, Omar’s custom-made loupes were snatched from the boot of his car outside his home in Whitefield, Bury, along with his laptop.
The 39-year-old posted a message on Facebook asking for help to get the glasses back, telling people they were a vital part of his work.
The M.E.N. published Omar’s appeal - and within 24 hours he was contacted by a man claiming to have found the glasses dumped in a bag on a construction site.
Omar said: “I was in Scotland and I took an anonymous call via the hospital’s switchboard from a man who had my loupes and wanted to meet me to give them to me.
“He found them inside a black bag that had been dumped on the construction site he worked on.
“He heard something on the radio about some missing operating glasses, so he did a search and saw the M.E.N.’s article which said where I worked so he contacted the hospital and they put him in touch with me.”
Omar said he was able to carry out standard operations using replacement loupes, but needs the specialist equipment to carry out the most painstaking and intricate operations.
Fortunately, he get them back in time for a major operation.
Omar added: “I’d spent many years trying to find the right ones, but they have got to be finely tuned to you and your vision, if they’re just a fraction of a millimetre off, you can’t use them.
“It’s amazing how quickly I got them back. There’s not a scratch on them, and I’d like to thank every single person who shared my post or the article. I’ve been overwhelmed by the support and the messages I’ve received from people. You really don’t expect it.
“It goes to show that collectively as a group there is so much power in social media and the fact that in such a short space of time it travelled such a considerable distance, I don’t think that would have been possible in any other medium.”