BERN MEDICAL
  • Home
  • Solutions
    • Radiology
    • About Data Visualization
    • Other Services

Doctor: Pencil pulled from tot's head 'very, very slowly'

1/30/2013

 
Picture
Great story, worth sharing.
A New Hampshire toddler who suffered a nightmarish injury when a pencil impaled her eye and became lodged in her head was saved by a remarkable turn of good fortune: The pencil that penetrated deep into her brain took a near-perfect path that left her virtually unscathed.

The pencil entered the eye socket, passed through the bottom of the brain’s right hemisphere, crossed the midline and went through most of the left hemisphere, stopping just short of her left ear, said Dr. Orbach the chief of interventional and neurointerventional radiology at Children’s.

Along its route, it managed to avoid important areas like the optic nerve, critical arteries and veins and other parts, that, if damaged, could have caused blindness, paralysis, devastating neurological damage, or death, Orbach said.

“It missed everything,” he said. “Almost any horrible outcome that you could imagine could have happened.”

While penetrating brain injuries usually cause bleeding that can be life threatening, a CT angiography scan done before the removal showed that in Olivia’s case, there was none, Orbach said.

“The CTA was probably the most remarkable scan I’ve ever seen,” he said. “If you follow the course of the pencil across the brain, the entire brain, it literally missed every major vessel in its path by millimeters.”

See the full story here.

Comments are closed.

    BERN BLOG

    Blog written by:
    David Fuhriman, CEO
    Contact Me

    Other Useful blogs

    Occam's Razor
    Six Pixels
    Junk Charts
    Kaizen Analytics
    Zoom Metrix

    Archives

    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011

    Springboard
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.