A rare surgery removes bullet parts from an Omani boy’s brain

MUSCAT: In a rare surgery which took eight hours, doctors at VPS Lakeshore Hospital in Kochi, India, managed to remove parts of a bullet that went inside an Omani boy’s brain after he accidently shot himself.
On November 20, 2018, 17-year-old Abdul Qader Al Alawi accidentally fired his gun at himself while he was trying to kill a cat that was attacking birds at their chicken farm in Jalan Bani Bu Ali.
A part of the bullet remained inside his chin while another part pierced through his tongue and nose and landed inside his brain. Though the bullet inside his chin was partly removed at a Government Hospital in Oman, he was brought to VPS Lakeshore in Kochi on December 18, 2018, to remove the one inside his brain and the part that remained on his chin.
Dr Sudish Karunakaran, Head of Neurosurgery, who led the team of doctors who performed the surgery, said it was done in two parts. First, they did the frontal craniotomy to open the skull in order to access the brain.
On December 20, 2018, the team took eight hours to complete the surgery to completely remove the bullet parts. Later, a team of ENT and oral and maxillofacial surgeons removed the remaining bullet parts from inside the boy’s chin. “I was on ventilator support for four days after the surgery and I have now fully recovered and am ready to be discharged,” a visibly relaxed Abdul Qader told the media in Kochi.