Household drill saves boy's life

[dipsydoodle]

A doctor in Australia used a household drill to bore into a boy's skull and drain it of blood clots as his local hospital lacked the required tools.

Dr Rob Carson performed the procedure on Nicholas Rossi, 13, after the boy fell off his bike and hit his head.

The doctor had never attempted the surgery before, and had to be talked through the operation by a Melbourne neurosurgeon.

The boy's father said the doctor's improvisation had saved his son's life.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8058771.stm

[Maine-i-acs]

1. Way to go, Dr. MacGyver!!

[LeftHander]

18. :::SNORT::: cracked me up...nt

[mwb970]

2. Would something like this help the republicans see straight? /nt

[pnutbutr]

3. Australia has a single payer system n/t

[mwb970]

4. Um, I was talking about drilling holes in their heads. /nt

[pnutbutr]

6. with all the stuff recently about healthcare

I went that direction.

[ejpoeta]

5. doubt it. they would argue that the reason they didn't have the proper tools

was because of socialized medicine.

[pnutbutr]

7. Makes you wonder what the reason was

considering Australia does have a single payer system.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Might have been a small local hospital

not equipped for what would be classed as brain surgery.

[Ikonoklast]

11. Does every walk-in clinic in the U.S. have a neurosurgeon

on staff?

That emergency could have happened a thousand miles from the nearest trauma center.

Once again, flying under the radar.

[pnutbutr]

12. not just about the neurosurgeon

it specifically mentioned the tools that the hospital was not equipped with.

[hunter]

20. Here in the U.S. we'd be suing the doctor and hospital for not using the proper tools.

And the insurance company would be denying payment for the same reason.

Then the insurance company would find a way to drop the kid and his family, and he would never ever be able to get health insurance again.

[juno jones]

9. Trepanation-

It's been around since the cave men, there are skulls from thousands of years ago with this same operation. He could have ultimately tried the same operation with a chisel-as has been done for centuries, but I'm damn glad the drill worked. It's probably a tad more accurate.

[KittyWampus]

16. I hope they at least used a diamond drill bit.

[juno jones]

21. LOL

I was wondering how they got it into an autoclave.

[Stevenmarc]

10. Now if he closed with duct tape it would be a story

[tomm2thumbs]

13. grindy grindy - eeek, I can't picture it - but glad it worked!

[TexasObserver]

14. MacGruber!!

[Jennicut]

15. Parts of Australia are extremely rural.

This was in a rural town of the state of Victoria.
It was a very small hospital.
Drills can be used to do this and have been used many times in emergency situations. The main point is to relieve the pressure on the brain.

[trof]

17. My father-in-law used a drill 'surgically'.

He was tough as nails.
We were stringing some fence and he whacked his thumbnail with a hammer.
It started to turn black.
He steadied it on a fence post, took his cordless drill, and VERY delicately bored through the nail to relieve the pressure.
Instant relief.

[aikoaiko]

19. its really not a giant mental leap to think of a household drill when a surgical drill was not there

Surgical drills


Household drill



But I am very impressed that he did it without any previous experience and being guided over the phone. Kudos to the competent doctor.
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