Construction worker falls FACE FIRST onto a metal pole and survives

Construction worker falls FACE FIRST onto a metal pole and survives after it punctures his skull but narrowly misses his brain and arteries

• The unnamed man in China fell off a two-metre platform onto the 30cm rod
• One expert surgeon says it is ‘amazing’ that he was not seriously wounded
• After brutal head surgery to remove the pole the man appears to have recovered 

A 25-year-old man narrowly avoided death after falling face-first onto a metal rod which went through his head, miraculously missing his brain and vital arteries.

The Chinese construction worker was walking along a two-metre high platform at work when he fell off and landed on the metal pole.

The rod went straight through the his cheek and came out the back of his skull, and required gruesome surgery to remove.

One surgeon says it is ‘amazing’ he survived and that the unnamed man was just inches from being blinded or killed by his mishap.

Surgeons cut out part of the man’s skull in order to get the pole out and compared his injury to someone being shot or stabbed in the face.

The man appears to have made a full recovery and did not need more treatment following an MRI after three months.

The unnamed man was taken to hospital in western China after falling from a platform onto a metal rod which went through his face but narrowly missed his brain

When the man arrived at West China Hospital in Chengdu, about 1,400 miles west of Shanghai, he was completely awake and stable, and his brain had not been affected.

The metal rod speared his cheek, went through his mouth and lodged into the back of his skull, narrowly missing his spinal cord and arteries connected to his brain.

He was given a breathing tube and quickly operated on, according to a case report in the International Medical Case Reports Journal.

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Surgeons cut open the back of his head and removed a section of his skull in an operation called a suboccipital craniotomy.

This involved drilling through the bone to release the metal, cutting away dead tissue and pulling the rod back out through the front of the man’s face.

‘To have an injury like this with no serious damage is amazing’ 

Richard Kerr, a consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University Hospitals and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the man had an ‘amazing’ escape.

Mr Kerr told MailOnline: ‘He was very lucky to survive. To have a penetrating injury from the front of the face to the back of the skull and not damage any of the vital structures is, I think, amazing.

‘There are not many parts of the head which could sustain this kind of injury without causing serious or even life-threatening damage.’  

A CT scan shows the 30cm metal pole went through the man’s cheek and embedded itself in the back of his skull, miraculously managing to miss important blood vessels

Richard Kerr, a neurosurgeon in Oxford, said it was ‘amazing’ that the man survived his injury without any serious damage to his head – pictured, an angiography scan shows a detailed image of where the rod became lodged in the skull

Pole just centimetres from penetrating the brain or eye 

The metal pole was low enough that it did not go into the man’s brain and it missed his vital arteries, but if it had been just centimetres to the side it could have blinded or killed him. 

‘Any higher and the rod would have penetrated the brain itself and the eye,’ Mr Kerr explained. 

‘As it was, the rod was very close to the major blood vessels and the brain stem but it did not damage these. 

‘Clearly if the rod had gone through the eye, vision would be lost on that side. 

‘Penetration of the brain would likely have resulted in a stroke or worse if a major blood vessel was damaged.’

Falling injuries rare but construction workers at maximum risk 

The authors of the study said this type of injury – called a nonprojectile penetrating skull base injury – are not uncommon in developing countries. 

But they added: ‘Although cases of penetrating head injuries as a result of fall from heights are very rare, we anticipate the construction workers on high-rise building are at maximum risk.’

Objects hitting the brain can kill people by destroying vital brain tissue, triggering swelling which puts pressure on the organ, or by causing a stroke.

The case report’s authors admitted this kind of injury is rare but construction workers in developing countries are among the people most at risk of such accidents

The rod was ‘very close’ to the carotid and vertebral arteries, according to neurosurgeon Richard Kerr, and the man would have likely been seriously injured or killed if the blood vessels were damaged

During surgery medics had to remove a section of the man’s skull in order to pull the metal rod back out, but he managed to make a full recovery afterwards

Mr Kerr added: ‘I have seen a variety of penetrating injuries but they were all following an assault, and I have also seen a few gunshot injuries to the head. 

Man made a full recovery after ‘standard procedure’ operation 

‘The suboccipital craniotomy is a standard procedure and would take perhaps an hour for the exposure and then the time to remove the rod.

‘The bone of the skull can be removed in one piece and then replaced at the end of the procedure but the bone immediately around the penetrating rod would be left out due to concerns about infection.’ 

A scan after the man’s operation showed no signs of blood clotting – he was kept on antibiotics for a week and then made a good recovery, according to the report.                      

GARDENER NOT BLINDED DESPITE BEING HIT IN THE EYE BY A NAIL

A 27-year-old landscape gardener in Massachusetts had a lucky escape when he avoided serious injury or vision damage when a three-inch (7.6cm) nail became lodged in his eye.

The metal object had been flicked up while the man was using a strimmer and narrowly missed his eyeball, entering just to the side, and came close to hitting the other eye or his brain.

Experts said if the nail had been millimetres to the side he could have suffered serious injury.  

Medics said if the nail had been just a few millimetres to the side of where it entered it could have caused serious damage to the man’s eye

But, luckily, surgeons managed to remove the nail safely and the man’s vision had returned to normal eight weeks later.

Neurosurgeon Dr Wael Asaad, of Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, said: ‘The tip of the nail was like the finger in the dam. We were worried that if we pulled it out, there would be bleeding.’  

Dr Asaad said nails penetrating the skull are not as uncommon as might be thought, and people should wear eye protection whenever operating heavy machinery or power tools.

Source: The New England Journal of Medicine  

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