Rescuing a little girl whose eyeball was nearly ruptured by a meat skewer.

A rare and extremely dangerous accident occurred to a 2.5-year-old girl in Bac Ninh when a meat skewer pierced her skull, posing a risk of brain injury and ruptured eyeball. The child was successfully treated by doctors at Viet Duc Hospital.

According to the girl's family, after school, her parents took her to eat grilled skewers. While running around holding a skewer of meat, she unfortunately tripped and fell, causing the sharp skewer to pierce directly into her face.

The accident caused panic among the family because the tip of the bamboo stick was deeply embedded near the child's left eye, causing her pain and constant crying. The family rushed her to the local hospital's emergency room, then transferred her to a higher-level hospital, and finally to Viet Duc Friendship Hospital that same night.

Upon admission, the foreign object was still deeply embedded, extending from the base of the nose upwards towards the left eye socket. However, what worried the doctors most was not knowing exactly how deep the sharp tip of the bamboo stick had penetrated.

The foreign object was surgically removed by the doctors.

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Hong Ha, Head of the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery - Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery at Viet Duc Hospital, said that this was one of the most difficult emergency situations because the child was too young, panicked, and unable to cooperate with the examination. The doctors only knew that a sharp foreign object had penetrated from the base of the nose into the eye socket, but could not yet determine whether it had punctured the eyeball, penetrated the skull, or damaged important blood vessels or nerves.

"One doctor even considered going back to the barbecue restaurant to get a similar skewer to compare the lengths and estimate how much had penetrated deep into the skull," a member of the team recounted.

That very night, the emergency room team activated a multidisciplinary consultation process. Doctors were forced to order emergency surgery as soon as possible. During the nearly hour-long surgery, the doctors had to trace the trajectory of the skewer, carefully checking for damage millimeter by millimeter before removing the foreign object. Fortunately, after the entire bamboo stick was removed, the child's hemodynamic status remained stable, with no massive bleeding or cerebrospinal fluid leakage. The left eyeball remained intact and maintained its elasticity.

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Hong Ha examines the child after the surgery.

Doctors consider this an extremely rare and fortunate case because if the bamboo stick had been just a few millimeters off, the girl could have suffered a ruptured eyeball, brain damage, or even death.

Currently, 5 days after surgery, the child's condition is gradually stabilizing. The left eye is still slightly swollen but vision is maintained. However, eye movement is still limited, and the patient needs continued close monitoring for cranial nerves, infection, and visual function in the coming days.

Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Hong Ha warns that accidents involving meat skewers, bamboo toothpicks, chopsticks, pens, candy sticks, etc., in young children can have particularly serious consequences. Children are active but not yet aware of the dangers; a single fall while eating and running can cause seemingly harmless objects to penetrate the eyes, skull, and other areas.

Therefore, parents should not let children eat while running and playing, should remove food from the skewers before giving it to children, and should cut off the sharp ends of the skewers if they want to give them to children to hold and eat.

Especially if a child is impaled by a sharp object, absolutely do not attempt to remove the foreign object yourself. Quickly take your child to a specialized medical facility for proper treatment and immobilization of the foreign object to prevent shaking.

Tran Hang

Source: https://cand.vn/cuu-be-gai-bi-que-xien-thit-dam-suyt-vo-nhan-cau-post811858.html