(VitalNews.org) – A Jerusalem hospital has revealed that a team of top surgeons managed to reattach a 12-year-old boy’s head to his spine following an internal decapitation. Hadassah Medical Center gave a positive update on the boy’s condition a month after the rare surgery was performed successfully by Dr. Ohad Einav and his team. Dr. Einav explained that the success of the surgery was down to the hospital’s innovative technology and his team’s high level of expertise. Dr. Einav had recently undertaken a medical fellowship in Toronto, Canada, where he had carried out this complex surgery on adults, and so was well-placed to help the boy after he was knocked over by a car while riding his bicycle.
When Suleiman Hassan was rushed to Hadassah Medical Center by helicopter following the near-fatal collision, doctors said that he had only a 50% chance of survival. He was suffering from a condition known as bilateral atlantooccipital joint dislocation, where the base of the skull had become completely detached from the spine, as had the ligaments that supported his head. Surgeons at the hospital explained that children are more prone to this particular type of catastrophic injury as compared to adults, the size of their head relative to their body is larger. Commenting on the positive outcome of the boy’s surgery, Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical Professor of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, said that he believed the key factor to Hassan’s survival was that his major blood vessels had remained intact, which maintained the flow of blood to the brain.
Hadassah Medical Center confirmed that the boy had recovered well from such a traumatic injury and that a month after surgery he shows no sign of neurological damage or motor deficiencies. His father, who remained by his son’s bedside throughout his recuperation, praised the hospital staff and the technology they used to save his beloved son. He told them that he had nothing but gratitude for managing to save his child despite the poor odds they faced. Suleiman Hassan has been discharged from the hospital and has been able to return home with the help of a cervical splint to aid in his recovery.
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