Doctor saves dying teen with household drill

Times – A country doctor saved the life of an Australian teenager by boring a hole into his skull with a household power drill to remove a blood clot.

Nicholas Rossi, who celebrated his 13th birthday yesterday, was suffering from the same type of head injury that killed the actress Natasha Richardson in March.

The emergency brain surgery was carried out at the hospital in Maryborough, a small city 100 miles northwest of Melbourne, after Nicholas fell off his bike and bumped his head outside a friend’s house. His mother, Karen, a nurse, took him to hospital as he began to lose consciousness.

The duty doctor, Rob Carson, noticed that Nicholas, who had suffered a fractured skull, was showing signs of bleeding on the brain. This can can cause death within minutes.

Dr Carson had no neurological equipment to hand but found the next best thing in the hospital maintenance room: a DeWalt power drill, which was sterilised for surgery.

The doctor, who had never performed such a procedure before, phoned David Wallace, a Melbourne neurosurgeon, who talked him through the operation, telling him where to aim the drill and how deep to go. Soon, a blood clot fell out, relieving the pressure on the boy’s brain.

David Tynan, the anaesthetist who assisted Dr Carson, said that the case was very similar to what had happened to Natasha Richardson, who died this year of a brain haemorrhage after falling and hitting her head on the ice while skiing in Canada.

Dr Tynan said: “Mr Wallace, the neurosurgeon, basically said it was a classic case of \ the movie actress . . . you think nothing’s wrong but she had a bleed and you go unconscious and don’t wake up.”