NEW DELHI: Doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital managed to save the life of a 16-year-old boy from Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, who had a 2cm-long piece of metal lodged into his spine. Devesh was using a crude device to scare off monkeys and birds by filling a metal pipe with potash and sulphur and blasting it when a piece of the pipe pierced his neck.
Doctors were surprised at how the teen was miraculously alive. "The metal had twisted and damaged his neck. It had pierced 1.5cm of the cervical bone and damaged his thyroid gland, narrowly missing the great blood vessels, wind and food pipe. It was just touching the spinal cord," said Dr Rupinder S Chahal, vice-chairperson of the department of spinal surgery.
Dr Sangeet Agarwal, consultant for head and neck surgery, said the operation was challenging due the location and nature of the injury. "Another challenge was to not only save but also to repair the injured thyroid gland. It was difficult to remove the metal shard in one piece, which was crucial, as otherwise it would have required a major reconstructive surgery," he added.
Leaving the metal could have led to more complications, said Dr Chahal. "This was crude metal with chemicals and could have caused infection and foreign-body reaction. Moreover, metals are known to travel in the body. Movement of a few millimetres could have damaged the spinal cord and proved fatal," he added. Devesh is now fit and will be discharged soon.