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CNN Live Today

Man Survives Removal of Spear Through His Skull

Aired July 02, 2002 - 13:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We have an amazing medical story out of Greece, where doctors successfully removed a spear from a patient's skull. What's shocking is the young man shows no permanent damage.

CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here it explain, how the heck did this happen? It is bizarre.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This is really petty amazing. Even -- I'm a neurosurgeon, as you know -- and even as a neurosurgeon, this is a pretty remarkable thing.

You have -- apparently what happened, this is a standard sort of spear gun that actually went through -- I think we have some pictures here as well -- actually went through the bottom of the jaw here -- and you can see the picture -- and actually went up into the top of the head, avoiding major blood vessels and many of the major structures within the brain.

Now I want to point out something here. Here, just looking at this picture alone, you really can't tell what part of the head. It could have just gone up along the side of the head here.

PHILLIPS: Like along the skin?

GUPTA: But you really can't tell until you look at the next picture. Here, let's take a look at that, if we have it up.

Well, anyway, the next picture basically shows that this thing, in fact, did go right through the brain. You can see it there.

PHILLIPS: Here we go. Oh, my gosh. That is smack -- is that in the middle.

GUPTA: Pretty close to the middle. If I could just point a couple things out here: As you get closer to the middle part of the brain, that's where you're going to have what's called your brain stem. And that is the part of the brain that's responsible for your breathing, your ability to regulate your heart rate -- all of the things that, if they were hit, would have actually killed this gentleman.

This actually went behind his eye, avoided some major blood vessels down here, right out the top of the head. Pretty remarkable thing. PHILLIPS: This is a miracle.

GUPTA: Yes, you know, it's amazing how much brain this spear could actually go through, and the guy apparently is doing just fine.

He's probably going to -- he, I think, already has walked out of the hospital.

PHILLIPS: OK, but what about later on? Is it possible that here could be some type of hemorrhaging or, you know, brain trauma?

GUPTA: Right, and that's the major concern. Certainly, hemorrhaging at the time that this spear actually went in. And also at the time that the spear came out. That was biggest concern for neurosurgeons taking something like this out.

When you take it out, a blood vessel that had been just -- the spear had been pushing against could actually start bleeding as the spear comes out.

The other thing is the left side of the brain, as you can see here, usually is responsible for his ability to speak, to understand, all those sorts of things. He may have some subtle difficulties with that over time, just because this brain -- this spear actually went through that part of his brain.

But, like I said, it looks like he did pretty well. So, pretty lucky.

And when they talk about millimeters of difference here, this is one of those cases. Millimeters over to the center of the brain, this probably would have killed him.

PHILLIPS: So, OK so, the surgery; explain the surgery to me. I mean, obviously they probably, you've got to freak out when someone comes into the emergency room, you know, with a spear sticking...

GUPTA: Everybody freaks out.

PHILLIPS: OK, exactly.

What's the first thing that you do? Do you have to -- how do you analyze and how do you know if you should try and take it out or not?

GUPTA: Right. Well, you move very slowly, first of all. That's the critical thing. You don't want to rush into something like this.

They actually sawed off the bottom part of the spear. I guess it was a pretty long spear. They sawed it off, and then actually got these X-rays to find out, again, the two images to see exactly where it was within the head and get a good sense of where the spear is with relationship to blood vessels and things like that.

And then basically what they're going to have to do is make a little hole at the top of the head and actually remove some of the bone up there and slowly pull this spear out -- under anesthesia, obviously, in a very controlled situation, looking for bleeding, looking for all those things that we've been talking about.

But it can be done. We've heard of other cases where someone -- we heard about a guy that actually took a nail gun and drove it through his forehead into his brain. They were able to take that out very much the same way.

Lucky guy, no question about it. But, you know, a successful operation to get that out.

PHILLIPS: All right, this just came in. I have to ask you about this. And I saw that you had a bottle of the -- what -- this nicotine water.

Thanks, Michael.

GUPTA: That's right. This is not contraband.

PHILLIPS: Please explain this to he.

GUPTA: So nicotine water. There are all these smoking cessation aides coming out. We've heard about nicotine lollipops -- I think you and I may have talked about them.

PHILLIPS: Yes.

GUPTA: These are actual lollipops that have nicotine in them. The pitch, anyway, is to try and get people to stop smoking by diverting their attention from tobacco to just straight nicotine.

The FDA doesn't agree with that philosophy. They've banned nicotine lollipops; they've banned nicotine balm -- lip balm, and now nicotine water also banned.

The thought -- a pretty good one -- which is that nicotine in and of itself is still a powerful drug. People think tobacco is always the culprit. That's not always the case. Nicotine itself can also be a bad problem; can accelerate the heart rate and cause all sorts of problems.

Other problem? Kids get their hands on this really quickly.

PHILLIPS: Oh yes, and it still looks like regular bottled water. You go to the refrigerator and...

GUPTA: Right, you could drink this.

The people who are big smokers that want to stop, there are other options for them -- very good options out there to try and stop smoking.

The whole theory behind that is you should gradually decrease your amount of tobacco, gradually decrease your amount of nicotine, not rev it up by drinking lots of nicotine water.

PHILLIPS: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

GUPTA: Great to see you.

PHILLIPS: Good advice. Good to see you, too.

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