A DOCTOR in rural Australia used a domestic electric drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.
Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in the small Victoria state city of Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement.
By the time his parents got him to hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.
Duty doctor Rob Carson quickly recognised the boy was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to relieve the pressure.
However, the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills – so Dr Carson sent for a household one from the maintenance room.
“Dr Carson came over to us and said, ‘I am going to have to drill into to relieve the pressure on the brain – we’ve got one shot at this and one shot only,” Nicholas’s father Michael told the Australian newspaper.
Dr Carson called a neurosurgeon in the state capital of Melbourne for help, who talked him through the procedure – which he had never before attempted – by telling him where to aim the drill and how deep to go.
“All of a sudden the emergency ward was turned into an operating theatre,” Mr Rossi said.
“We didn’t see anything, but we heard the noises, heard the drill.”
Nicholas was airlifted to a larger hospital in Melbourne and released yesterday – his 13th birthday. –