A toddler in China has had a chopstick removed from his skull after it got lodged there through his mouth.
The boy, known by his nickname Yang Yang, accidentally fell onto the chopstick during lunch time on February 18 at his home in Hengyang, Hunan Province.
Surgeons carried out an emergency operation overnight in order to save the child, according to a local report.
The chopstick impaled the boy’s mouth and was lodged in his brain after an accident in China
Surgeons has successfully removed the wooden stick after an overnight emergency operation
Yang Yang, who was not yet two years old, was running around his home while holding the chopstick, according to his father Mr Li.
The child got tripped by a threshold and the chopstick speared into his mouth, Mr Li told Hunan Television Station.
The boy’s mother told the station that Yang Yang’s grandmother was following behind Yang Yang trying to feed him food.
Yang Yang was rushed to a local hospital. Local doctors told his family members that they must take the boy to the Central South University’s Second Xiangya Hospital, which is in the provincial capital Changsha.
Doctors from the Central South University’s Second Xiangya Hospital immediately examined the boy after receiving him at around 6pm.
They found that the chopstick had gone so deep into his skull that it was resting in his brain. Emergency surgery was planned and a team of interdepartmental experts was formed.
The neurosurgeons opened the boy’s skull from the back of his head to remove the chopstick
Neurosurgeons Huang Wei, Xiang Jun and chief of neuro Zhou Yangpo operated on the child, but the surgery proved most difficult for the anaesthesiologists, reports said.
The experts were unable to put the boy under because the mask used to induce the safest form of anaesthesia was obstructed by the protruding chopstick.
The doctors therefore decided to cut a section of the stick off in order to fit the mask over the boy’s face.
The neurosurgeons opened the boy’s skull from the back of his head, accessing his posterior cranial fossa to find the tip of the chopstick.
The wooden stick was then slowly removed from the boy’s oral cavity, which caused bleeding from his wounds.
The operation which began in the evening ended in the early hours of the following morning, but it was a success.
The toddler has since regained consciousness in the facility’s ICU.
The hospital expects him to be discharged in the coming days.