Stuck inside during the coronavirus lockdown, 5-year-old Kian Assad was entertaining himself by dancing around his McAllen, Texas, house a few weeks ago when he fell, hitting his head on a door hinge.
In normal circumstances, it was the type of injury that would likely merit a trip to the emergency room. Blood was gushing out of a cut on Kian’s scalp.
But with hospital ERs teeming with coronavirus patients, Kian’s father, Dr. Christian Assad, was not sure he wanted to go and risk exposing his family, which includes a newborn, to the virus.
So Assad, an interventional cardiologist, weighed his options. After examining his son, he decided he would rather handle the injury himself — despite the fact that he had not treated head wounds since he moonlighted in an emergency department seven years ago.
“Like everything we do in medicine, it’s a calculated risk, and my calculated risk was this is what we have to do,” Assad said, adding that had it not been for the threat of COVID-19, the…
