A US teenager's survival after a spear
was shot through his brain is a
miracle, doctors say. Yasser Lopez, 16, is recovering after he
was accidentally hit with a spear gun
by a friend during a Florida fishing trip
this month. Medics at Jackson Memorial Hospital in
Miami said the 3ft (90cm) projectile
entered his brain over his right eye and
went out the back of his head. He is now out of bed and speaking
following a three-hour operation. Medics said he was awake as he arrived
at hospital, and became "agitated". After sedating the teenager, part of the
stainless steel spear had to be severed
with a mechanical cutter so he could fit
into the CT scanner. Doctors said the teenager has no
memory of the freak accident. He was shot with the projectile as he
swam in a lake near his Miami area
home on 8 June when his friend set off
the trigger of a spear gun he was
loading. While medics are not sure of the extent
of the damage to his memory and other
parts of the brain, they say his
condition could have been much worse. "It's a miracle the spear missed all the
main blood vessels of the brain,"
neurosurgeon Ross Bullock told
reporters. Also helpful, doctors say, was the
foreign object's trajectory into the right
side of the brain, Mr Lopez's non-
dominant lobe, missing the parts
responsible for speech and other
important functions.
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