- People don’t usually bounce back from decapitation, but this boy did.
It’s not good to lose your head in any meaning of the phrase. In the best-case scenario, you’ll do something you’ll later regret.
Meanwhile, in the worst case, the rest of your body can wave your precious noggin goodbye.
Not always, though. Did you know it’s possible for you to be decapitated without your head leaving your shoulders?
It’s true, and it’s what happened to Suleiman Hassan, a 12-year-old boy from the West Bank in Israel. A traffic accident severed his skull from his spine — essentially decapitating him inside his body.
You might think such a grievous injury would mark the end of Hassan’s story, and in most cases, you’d be right. But thanks to swift action from first responders and their own expert skills, surgeons were able to repair Hassan’s skull-to-spine connection.
Basically, they put his head back on his shoulders.
But the most miraculous part is that the boy reportedly has not suffered any significant permanent damage. His mental faculties remain the same and he left the hospital walking with his own two legs.
A Rarest of Injuries
Hassan’s accident happened in early June this year. The Palestinian boy was riding his bicycle when a car crashed into him.
First responders arrived at the scene and realized Hassan was seriously hurt. Not wanting to waste time, they airlifted the boy to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed Hassan had suffered an extremely rare injury. The official name for his condition is bilateral atlanto occipital joint dislocation.
That’s a clinical way to say the ligaments holding the base of Hassan’s skull had torn and separated it from his first vertebra. In even plainer terms, he was internally decapitated.
Sure, his head was still there on his shoulders. But the accident had severed the nerve connection between Hassan’s skull and spine, essentially decapitating him.
The condition is rare in adults, and even more so in children. A 2003 report from the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia noted only 16 cases of internal decapitation in children between 1983 and 2003, reported the Times of Israel.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the survival rate of decapitation — internal or external — is low. According to one survey, 55% of children who suffer Hassan’s injury don’t make it through to recovery.
Knowledge and Experience
So, it was a small wonder that Hassan was still clinging to life. Yet, those unlikely odds only motivated surgeons at Hadassah to save him.
“We fought for the boy’s life,” said Dr. Ohad Einav, an orthopedic injury specialist who led Hassan’s surgery. Assisting him were Dr. Ziv Asa and a huge intensive care team.
Hassan was lucky that Dr. Einav was at Hadassah. The surgery to reattach an internally severed requires in-depth expertise.
“This is not a common surgery at all, and especially not on children and teens. A surgeon needs knowledge and experience to do this,” Dr. Einav said.
Fortunately, he had the knowledge and experience. Dr. Einav had performed similar operations on adults while completing his training in Toronto, Canada.
Yet, even with all his skills, the surgery wasn’t easy.
“The procedure itself is very complicated and took several hours. While in the operating room, we used new plates and fixations in the damaged area,” explained Dr. Einav.
‘Bless You All’
In the end, though, the operation was successful. The surgeons repaired Hassan’s ligament and neural injuries — sewing his back onto his shoulders, for the lack of a better description.
That alone is a small miracle. Yet, the most incredible part is that the boy doesn’t appear to have suffered any immediate debilitating complications.
His brain and senses seem to work the same as they did before the accident. Not only that, he’s walking unassisted.
“The fact that such a child has no neurological deficits or sensory or motor dysfunction, and that he is functioning normally and walking without an aid after such a long process, is no small thing,” Dr. Einav said.
Earlier in July, Hassan was discharged from the hospital. He still has to wear a cervical splint — a neck brace for those of us who don’t speak Doctorese — but he walked out of the door on his own.
That must’ve been an incredible moment for his father. According to hospital reports, Hassan’s father didn’t leave his bedside once during his son’s recovery.
“I will thank you all my life for saving my dear only son. Bless you all,” he told the hospital staff.
“Thanks to you he regained his life even when the odds were low and the danger was obvious … All I can say is a big thank you.”
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