A team of Chulalongkorn veterinarians have removed 915 coins weigh about five kilogrammes from the stomach of a green sea turtle after seven hours of surgery.
Assistant professor Pasakorn Prueksawan, a lecturer of surgery department, of Chulalongkorn University, said that the operation which took about seven hours by a five-member surgical team was satisfactory.
But the director of the research centre of marine diseases said that although the condition of the green sea turtle, named Omsin, had improved after the surgency, the next issue of concern is that the turtle has to be subjected to rehabilitation for half a year so it will be able to swim again.
For the first week after the successful surgery, Omsin has to be kept in sterilized
salt water pond after which it will be transferred to sea turtle conservation centre of the Royal Thai Navy in Sattathip.
Meanwhile dean of the veterinary faculty Professor Rungrote Thanawongnuvech said that the widespread belief that when a coin was thrown into a pond full of turtles and the coin hit one of the turtles, the coin thrower will live a long life like the turtles resulted in many turtles to be confined to a pond and several of them died because they swallowed coins into their stomachs.
