Cardiac surgeons in Russia performed the incredible life-saving operation, which involved taking the man’s heart out of his body, repairing the damage and then replacing the organ in his chest.
The 53-year-old, whose name has not been released, was rushed to hospital in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg with two arrows stuck in his heart.
He was still conscious and told medics that he had tried to commit suicide because he did not want to live anymore. He had shot himself a second time after he did not succeed in killing himself on his first attempt.
The arrows were so long that doctors had to cut off the ends of the shafts so that he could be x-rayed for a tomography scan.
One of the arrows had passed through the man’s left ventricle, mitral valve and left atrium, while the second had entered from the side of his abdominal aorta.
Medics kept the man alive with a heart-lung machine while they removed the arrows, and then sewed up the wounds using the patient’s own heart tissue.