This week in Weird Patient, a Malaysian worker who suffered an accident at work accidentally shot a nail in his face which went through his eye and lodged in his skull. It is valid and conscious that he presented himself to the emergency room, under the stunned eye of the doctors.
This should encourage the unwary to read and apply safety instructions carefully before handling dangerous objects… In Malaysia, a 30-year-old man working in the constructionconstruction suffered a terrible accident: using a nail gun pneumaticpneumatic without protective glasses, he accidentally shot a nail through his left eye! The nail, measuring 3.2 cm, penetrated the upper part of theorbitorbit before lodging in the frontal lobe of the brain, the journal reports Cureus. Despite this serious injury, he remained conscious and went to the hospital on his own.
An improbable survival
The patient owes his survival to several factors. First, the nail did not hit critical areas of the brain that control immediate vital functions. In addition, rapid medical intervention was crucial: a craniotomycraniotomy Emergency surgery allowed the nail to be removed and the bleeding and fractures to be treated orbitalsorbitals. Finally, his relatively stable initial condition, with normal vital parameters and a Glasgow Coma Score of 15, greatly facilitated his care. The Glasgow Coma Scale is a measurement scale ranging from 3 to 15, used by health professionals to assess a person’s level of consciousness after a brain injury. It measures three aspects: eye opening, verbal response and motor response.
The rarity of this injury
Penetrating brain injuries like the one suffered by our worker are rare and represent only 0.4% of head injuries. Even more exceptional are transorbital injuries, where an object enters through the orbit to reach the brain. They are usually caused by shrapnel, bullets or metal objects and are often associated with severe neurological and ophthalmological damage.
Someone else became famous for being the victim of a similar, but even more spectacular, accident: in 1848, American laborer Phineas Gage survived a severe brain injury when an iron bar pierced his skull , destroying part of his frontal lobe. Although he survived, his personality changed drastically: he became impulsive, unreliable and lost some of his intelligenceintelligenceproviding scientists of the time with valuable information on the role of the frontal lobe in the regulation of personality and behavior.
What are the possible after-effects?
THE after-effectsafter-effects Potential such injuries include neurological deficits, such as motor or cognitive impairment, as well as permanent ophthalmological damage, such as vision loss. There gravitygravity The extent of after-effects depends on the area of the brain affected, the speedspeed and the quality of medical care. In the case of the Malaysian patient, although he avoided major neurological deficits, he lost vision in his left eye.
After his operation, the patient was discharged from the hospital five days later without neurological deficits. However, he no longer perceived lightlight with his left eye. Details of his long-term recovery are not available, as he left Malaysia soon after. The consequences of his injury on his daily life therefore remain unknown, but he survived a potentially fatal situation thanks to rapid and effective medical care.
