Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Doctor Saves Boy With Household Drill

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-should-see-what-he-can-do-with-a-belt-sander dept.

Richard Dean Anderson, the MacGyver himself, would be proud of Dr. Rob Carson after he used a household drill to save a boy's life. The 12-year-old fell off his bike and hit his head. His mother took him to the hospital when he complained of a headache and an hour later he began to have spasms and go unconscious. The doctor realized that the boy was suffering from acute pressure on the brain from internal bleeding, and got a DeWalt drill from the hospital maintenance room to drill a hole in the boy's skull to relieve the pressure. The boy's father said, "Dr Carson came over to us and said, 'I am going to have to drill into Nicholas to relieve the pressure on the brain — we've got one shot at this and one shot only.'"

7 comments

  1. He should have been wearing a helmet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where are you anti-helmet zealots? The crickets are chirping.

  2. Uh.. by dexmachina · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...don't have medical drills for that very purpose?

    1. Re:Uh.. by Techman83 · · Score: 1

      ...don't have medical drills for that very purpose?

      Small country towns aren't always as well equiped as the bigger cities (Maryborough has a population of about 7000). I'm not surprised that Dr Carson pulled this off, he's an incredibly skilled/gutsy Doctor. He actually delivered my little sister, who came out tangled in the umbilical cord and a nasty shade of blue, according to my father the proficiency he showed in the removal was nothing short of amazing.

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cat
      Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
    2. Re:Uh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Household scissors?

    3. Re:Uh.. by dregs · · Score: 1

      the local articles state, that the "medical drill" that was on-site, was to small to drill a hole this big, so something with more "torque" was located.

      I can just see the ad's now, You don't need to be a brain surgeon to work our drills, etc, etc

    4. Re:Uh.. by jpedlow · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but they're no DEWALT. http://www.dewalt.com/us/products/tool_detail_listing.asp?categoryID=350 "Good for Wood, Concrete, thin metal, and SKULLS"

  3. The very link in TFS... by mr_mischief · · Score: 1

    ...don't have medical drills for that very purpose?

    ...to Ananova, about this very story, leads to the related story there (funny how that works, huh?) that states specifically "The small country hospital was not equipped with neurological drills, so Dr Carson obtained a household De Walt drill, used for boring holes in wood, from a hospital maintenance room."

    So, no, it seems this particular small country hospital, not being equipped for neurosurgery, did not have a neurological drill on hand. Not every hospital and clinic in the world -- even in the modern countries -- performs neurosurgery on a regular basis. This boy would have been airlifted to somewhere that did if there had been time. He was airlifted after he stabilized some.