Neurosurgeons in the United States removed a 15-centimeter screw from a child's skull - a board fell on the boy's head. Doctors note that if the screw had deviated by even a millimeter, the boy would have died from bleeding.
A seventh grader from the United States miraculously survived after his head was pierced by a 15-centimeter screw that entered the brain. The neurosurgeons told CNN about an unusual case.
Darius Foreman, 13, was helping his cousins build a tree house when he fell off a branch and fell to the ground. After him flew and a half-meter board with a 15-centimeter screw.
When the boy got up, it turned out that the screw had entered the skull, attaching the board to the head.
In this form, he was found by his aunt, who came to the rescue in a few seconds.
“I thought I had something stuck in my hair,” the boy told Delmarva Now.
The aunt quickly put the boy on the ground and called the doctors. But even they did not immediately understand what a dangerous situation Darius was in. The screw not only damaged his skull, but also entered the brain in the area of the superior sagittal sinus, a large vein located between the hemispheres of the brain and directing blood from him to the heart. If a screw had pierced a vein, the boy would have died of hemorrhage.
“Another millimeter - and he would have bled out,” says neurosurgeon Alan Cohen.
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Before removing the screw, you had to get rid of the board. Due to her size, the boy could not even be loaded into an ambulance. Then it was decided to saw off part of the board, leaving about 60 cm. So Darius was taken to a local hospital.
After the X-ray, it was decided to send the boy for surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The doctors had to borrow a helicopter from the police - the sick leave was not large enough.
Finally, the doctors began the operation. Neurosurgeon Chenadoah Robinson got rid of the remains of the board and the top of the screw.
“The danger was where he was located,” Cohen explains. “This is what made the injury so serious. The boy could bleed to death. The screw was like a time bomb …”.
Fortunately, seven hours after the injury, doctors were able to remove the remnants of the screw, along with small fragments of the skull and blood clots formed in the area of the injury.
According to the doctors, they have done almost a piece of jewelry. They had to ream the skull around the screw.
"If we tried to twist it, it could lead to profuse bleeding," explains Cohen. "We carefully drilled the bone down to the meninges to get to the screw."
In place of the removed fragment of the skull, the doctors installed a titanium plate. And they gave the remains of the screw to Darius - in memory of his failed acquaintance with death. He was discharged from the hospital on his 13th birthday.
Hospital staff decorated his room and helped throw a party to celebrate a fantastic turn of events that could have ended differently.
“It was the millimeter that made this boy survive and not die,” Cohen said. “We might not know what happened to him. This is a story with a happy ending."
However, this is not the only case when it is possible to get rid of a foreign object in the brain without serious consequences. For example, in 2011, a professor at the University of Aachen, Frank Holze and his colleagues removed a 10 cm long pencil from the head of a 24-year-old Afghan. For 15 years, the patient suffered from constant headache, runny nose and vision problems.
How the pencil ended up in his head, the victim does not know for certain. He could only remember that at the age of nine he fell unsuccessfully, which caused him severe nosebleeds. The pencil may have entered the head as a result of this fall, damaging the internal soft tissues and the right eye socket.
The pencil was found as a result of computed tomography: the pain became so unbearable that the victim decided to take action and turned to doctors.
And in January 2012, American Dante Autullo was making repairs at his home in Chicago and accidentally scratched himself with a pneumatic construction gun. The next day he felt unwell and went to the doctor. X-rays showed that the patient had not scratched, but had driven a 7.5-centimeter nail into his skull. The damage was minimal. After the doctors removed the nail from the skull, Autullo kept it for himself.
Some stories end more tragically. So, in 2009 in China, a resident of Jiangsu province tried to kill his wife with a 10-centimeter nail.
The man wanted to present this brutal murder as an accident in order to receive insurance payment.
He hit his wife's head on a nail as the woman fell asleep at the table. The man tried to re-enact the accident in which he killed his brother-in-law with an electric stove.
Zang Ling, a Chinese woman victim of the assassination attempt, survived and was sent to intensive care. Doctors saved her life, but her brain was severely damaged, which made her unable to speak.
Alla Salkova