Nails removed from Sukuna boy brain in surgery

TT, Siliguri, July 9: A four-year-old boy has survived a fatal head injury after three nails which had penetrated his brain were taken out in a three-hour surgery at a private nursing home in Siliguri.

Ayan Pradhan had fallen off the balcony on the second-floor of his home at Sukna on July 4, smashing the right head against the boundary wall which had nails wedged on the surface. The boy was playing when the accident occurred.

"Five nails had penetrated the right side of my son's head. We immediately took him to the local health centre at Sukna where the doctor was able to remove just one nail as only its tip had pierced the head," said Saurav Pradhan, the boy's father.

From there, the boy's parents immediately rushed him to a private nursing home in Matigara, Siliguri, where neurosurgeon Rahul Prasad removed the remaining four nails. The operation commenced around 6pm that day and went on for three hours.

Prasad said the four nails measuring 10cm each had pierced three to five centimeters into the brain.

"An operation had to be immediately conducted so that no major damage was caused to his brain. While one nail pierced near the right eye, three others penetrated the skull bone into the brain. One nail was near the middle cerebral artery which supplies blood to the cerebrum. If the artery had been damaged, it could have caused paralysis on one side of the body. The other nail was near the motor cortex, the portion of the brain that controls voluntary movement like speech and limb movement. The third one just pierced the skull bone," he said.

The neurosurgeon said he had to drill open the skull bone in a diameter of 6-7cm, where the nails were pierced.

Saurav works at a noodles factory at Rangpo in Sikkim where Ayan studies in nursery at a private school. He was in Sukna, 10km from here, with his parents on a holiday.