An Indian man was raced to hospital after being impaled in the neck by a 5ft iron spike.
Karthikeyan accidentally slipped and fell from the first floor of his home in the city of Tiruchirappalli, in the southern Tamil Nadu state.
As the 33-year-old fell 20ft, a rod with serrated edges pierced all the way through his neck.
According to local reports, the patient was fully conscious as his family rushed him to a nearby hospital where he underwent a three-hour surgery.
Doctors were unable to X-ray Karthikeyan’s wounds, so only a bedside ultrasound was done.
Dr Mohamed Mansoor said: ‘After initial stabilisation of the patient, a plan was chartered out to remove the iron rod by involving a team of specialists.
‘We were not able to do any sort of imaging or x-ray of the wound as it would have created an artifact (distortion).
‘So only a bedside ultrasound was done to ensure no major vascular injury. The rod was then shortened on either side with the help of maintenance engineers in the hospital.
‘Shorting of the rod was the only option available to ensure safe mobilisation of the patient as the rod would make it difficult to enable us to subject him to any form of scanning or interventions.’
Miraculously, Karthikeyan survived and was ‘really lucky’ to have made a recovery.
Dr Mansoor stressed this was a ‘challenging’ surgery as the neck is where the windpipe, food pipe and the carotid artery are.
‘A team of specialists ensured that none of the major organs or vessels in the neck was injured,’ he added.
‘Cases of grievous neck injury such as this are rare, and survival rates are quite low in our state.
‘The patient was really lucky to have been brought to hospital quickly and also to have his voice unaffected by the accident.
‘As surgeons, we had to ensure that the rod was removed with precision, with no residual contents left behind.’
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