Israeli doctors attach boy’s head after it got severed in accident

Jerusalem: Doctors in Israel performed ‘miracle’ by attaching 12-year-old boy’s head after was ‘ almost completely detached from the base of his neck’, The Times of Israel reported.

Suleiman Hassan suffered an ‘ internal decapitation’ or what in scientific terms known as a bilateral atlanto occipital joint dislocation, where his skull came off from the top of vertebrae after hit by a car while riding a bicycle.

Doctors at the Hadassah Medical Center, where he was airlifted and taken to an emergency surgery last month, performed a difficult surgery lasting several hours.

Dr Ohad Einav, the orthopaedic surgeon who oversaw the treatment, reportedly said surgery involved placing ‘ new plates and fixations in the damaged area’.

The surgeons called the success a miracle as the boy had 50 chance of survival.

‘Our ability to save the child was thanks to our knowledge and the most innovative technology in the operating room,’ Dr Ohad Einav was quoted as saying.

The doctors did not make the results public as Hassan was discharged only recently with a cervical splint.

Dr Einav said it was no small thing that even after such a long process, the boy has no ‘neurological deficits or sensory or motor dysfunction and that he is functioning normally and walking without an aid’.

He added that surgeons needed knowledge and experience to perform such a difficult surgery as it was not a common procedure at all.

The boy's father thanked the hospital staffers, saying the child ‘ regained his life even when the odds were low and the danger was obvious.’