Iron rod pierces brain; Maharashtra man, 21, lives to tell tale

NAGPUR: An iron rod pierced right through the head of a 21-year-old man at

Balaghat

on Wednesday. Luckily, the patient, Sanjay Bahe, remained conscious and oriented all through the journey from Balaghat to Nagpur for treatment the same day, where doctors were able to remove the rod safely and save his life.

The patient was constructing a well in his house to save money on labour. Bahe, who belongs to a farmer family, said the lower portion of the well was complete but the rods were yet to be removed. “The stand on which I was perched broke, and I fell on the rods,” he said.

One of the rods entered his head from the right side, passed through his brain, and came out the left side of the head. The rod pierced his left hand too before Bahe came to rest at the bottom of the well.

Neurosurgeon Dr Pramod Giri and his team at Neuron Hospital did a fine job in the surgery, and the patient didn’t require ICU care even after the operation, as he continues to be conscious and stable. The doctors also had to cut the rod piercing through his hand. The patient had suffered some injuries on the leg too.

Dr Giri told TOI the rod entered the right temporal region of the brain passed through the left frontal region across the midline. The rod did damage brain tissue but luckily the portion affected may only cause problems like seizures and behavioural changes, like irritability, in later part of his life. None of the injuries is life threatening.

“Since the road was rusted, we are keeping him under observation in hospital with antibiotics for a week, to ensure that he doesn’t suffer from meningitis infection,” he said.

The surgery, which took one-and-a-half hours, involved

craniotomy

and removal of the rod. The surgery, said Dr Giri, was not very difficult but required skill and precaution not to touch the main blood vessels. Any damage to the superior sagittal sinus, the vessel that drains blood from all over the brain to outside the brain, and the

middle cerebral artery

could have led to bleeding. “A cut in the superior sagittal sinus could have caused his death,” he added.

Bahe’s family had to borrow money from relatives for the surgery. “Villagers too contributed to the expenses. So far we have spent about Rs90,000 and will require a few thousand more as he has to under observation for next seven days. The hospital administration has been good enough to accept the money in instalments,” said the patient’s uncle, Pratap Bahe.

Bahe himself said, “I can do nothing more but thank the doctors for saving my life.”

Besides Dr Giri, the doctors team included anaesthetist Dr Shivaji Deshmukh, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Yogesh Deshmukh, general surgeon Dr Kanhaya Chandak, and intensivists Dr Sushant Adman and Dr Tushar Yelne.


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