A 12-year old boy's skull was inserted to his stomach as doctors treated potentially deadly brain infection brought about by a football accident, according to the Daily Mail.
Lewis Smith had a crippling headache two weeks after playing football with his friends. He was immediately rushed to the hospital where doctors initially found a severe infection in his sinus. He was operated on for six hours to free his brain from potentially life-threatening infection. In order to prevent the condition from worsening, doctors kept the severed bone clean by depositing it in his stomach. This meant that his brain was able to swell without pressurizing the skull, which may have rendered his unconscious.
The bone remained in his stomach for two long months before eventually being replaced a day before his 13th birthday. Lewis's mother, Nicki, 44, said: "It was so scary. We were none the wiser about Lewis' condition until we set off on holiday and I noticed his forehead had started to swell up. He had suffered a knock on the head playing football a couple of weeks before, so we thought it might have been related to that. When it began to cover his right eye, giving him ongoing headaches, we visited two hospitals but both indicated it might be mild concussion. It was all such a sudden shock to us. One moment we were on holiday, the next our son was being taken into an operating theater - it was a complete nightmare."
Advanced pediatric neurosurgical nurse practitioner Chrissy Ward said: "When anyone has an infection to the brain it is very serious. The antibiotics must be strong enough to penetrate the blood brain barrier and kill it off. But in addition to treating Lewis's infection, we had contend with the swelling of his brain."
