Australian doctor uses household drill to save boy

A doctor in rural Australia used a household drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.

Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in the small Victoria state city of Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement. By the time Rossi got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The doctor on duty, Rob Carson, quickly recognized the 13-year-old was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to drill a hole through the boy's skull to relieve the pressure.


Photo from here.

But the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills - so Carson grabbed a household drill from the maintenance room.

"Dr. Carson came over to us and said, 'I am going to have to drill into (Nicholas) to relieve the pressure on the brain - we've got one shot at this and one shot only,"' the boy's father, Michael Rossi said.

Carson called a Melbourne neurosurgeon for help, and the specialist talked Carson through the procedure - which he had never before attempted - by 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. Rossi was airlifted to a larger hospital in Melbourne and released Tuesday - his 13th birthday.

There's an audio interview with Dr Carson here.