In a miraculous achievement, surgeons at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Israel successfully reattached a 12-year-old boy’s head to his neck after he suffered an “internal decapitation” caused by a serious accident.
The Palestinian boy from the West Bank was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He was quickly airlifted to the hospital. As per the doctors, Hassan suffered a bilateral atlanto occipital joint dislocation.
The doctors said Hassan’s skull got detached from the top vertebrae of his spine and he was immediately operated upon in the trauma unit, according to a Times of Israel report.
The procedure took place last month, and the result was made public in July.
Dr Ohad Einav, an orthopaedic specialist who returned to Israel a year ago after a fellowship at trauma centres in Toronto, led the operation, which took several hours.
As per the report, Dr Einav said the doctors used “new plates and fixations in the damaged area.”
He said his experience of performing such surgeries earlier on adult patients as part of his training in Toronto prepared him to operate on young Hassan.
“Our ability to save the child was thanks to our knowledge and the most innovative technology in the operating room,” r Einav was quoted as saying by the New York Post.
Hassan recently got discharged from the hospital with nothing but a cervical splint. Doctors said they will continue to monitor his recovery.
The surgeons said the boy had a 50 percent chance of survival, and his recovery was truly miraculous.
“The fact that such a child has no neurological deficits or sensory or motor dysfunction and that he is functioning normally and walking without an aid after such a long process is no small thing,” added Dr Einav.
The hospital further stated that the boy's father never left his son at any moment.
As reported by Israel's TPS news agency, thanking the doctors, Hassan’s father said, “Thanks to you, he regained his life even when the danger was obvious.”
He added that the professionalism, technology and quick decision-making of the hospital’s trauma and orthopaedics team saved his boy’s life.
