http://www.smh.com.au/world/strangebuttrue/doctors-discover-knife-in-mans-brain-20110219-1b08v.html
Doctors discover knife in man's brain Gillian Wong February 20, 2011 Splitting headache ... an X-ray reveals the blade in Mr Li's skull. BEIJING: Surgeons in southern China successfully removed a rusty 10-centimetre knife from the skull of a man who said it had been there for four years, the hospital said. Li Fuyan, 30, had been complaining of severe headaches, bad breath and breathing difficulties but never knew the cause of his discomfort, a senior official at the Yuxi City People's Hospital in Yunnan province said. Mr Li told doctors he had been stabbed in the lower right jaw by a robber four years ago. The blade had broken off without anyone realising it, said the director of the hospital's Communist Party committee's office who would only give his surname, He. Surgeons had worked cautiously to remove the badly corroded blade without shattering it, Mr He said. The hospital's website also reported the successful surgery. The case, which one of the doctors described as a miracle, has been widely covered by the Chinese media and discussed on the internet. ''We checked his mouth, but no wound or scar has been found . It is very strange as to how the blade got into his head,'' Xu Wen, deputy director of the hospital's stomatology department, told the state broadcaster CCTV. CCTV showed footage of the rusted knife and interviewed Mr Li, who said: ''As time passed I used injections to kill the pain in my head and ears. It has been four years already.'' Dr Eugene Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Centre in New York, said X-ray images of the man's head posted on the hospital's website show the knife sitting behind the man's throat, having missed the carotid artery. ''There are planes and spaces between important organs,'' Dr Flamm said. ''That's how one does surgery - you dissect in those planes: move the trachea one way, the oesophagus the other.'' Perhaps out of ''sheer luck'' the knife had passed through one such area, Dr Flamm said, adding that he was still surprised at the time the blade was said to have spent in the man's body. Associated Press [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: prole...@egroups.com Subscribe : proletar-subscr...@egroups.com Unsubscribe : proletar-unsubscr...@egroups.com List owner : proletar-ow...@egroups.com Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: proletar-dig...@yahoogroups.com proletar-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: proletar-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
