Man survives with knife stuck in face

Amazing scans show a 10cm knife stuck in a man’s face after he was stabbed in a drunken fight.

Incredibly‚ the man went home to sleep after the fight‚ and told doctors at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto that his only symptoms were a headache and pain when he moved his left eye.

“After the fight I went home to try and clean up so I can take a nap. My friends showed up‚” the man says in British medical journal Case Reports‚ where doctors who treated him report the case.

“They are the ones who took me to the hospital and we had a little argument because I didn’t feel that I was stabbed.”

“The only time I realised was when they did an X-ray at hospital in Germiston. Then the doctor told me he was going to send me to another hospital in Soweto‚ where I stayed three full days before the operation.”

Scans show the blade stuck under the unnamed man’s left eye‚ and doctors said it lodged in a bone‚ preventing it from moving around.

Ophthalmologists at Chris Hani Baragwanath‚ who were called in by the trauma department because of the man’s eye injuries‚ requested the help of ear‚ nose and throat specialists‚ maxillofacial surgeons and neurosurgeons.

Dr Dairui Dai‚ who wrote the case report‚ said an angiography – a scan used to visualise the inside of blood vessels and organs – showed there was no damage to the man’s brain.

By the time the blade was removed the next day under anaesthetic, it had been stuck in the patient’s face for four days. He was discharged two days later.

Dai – with co-authors doctors Silke Meyer‚ Lars Christian Kaltheuner and Frank Plani – said: “Incredibly‚ the patient had no initial sequelae from such an extensive injury and had an unremarkable recovery with no further complications, aside from a laceration to the left inferior rectus muscle [the muscle that moves the eyeball downward and inward] that was conservatively managed.”

Writing in Dai’s article‚ the patient said: “Greetings to you‚ I’d like to share my story with you. I was stabbed in the bottom of my eye when I was trying to help a friend … I can’t put blame on him.

“I’d like to thank the team which participated in my operation. They have done the most beautiful job.”

Dai said in his journal article that knife injuries were common among young black South African men. “Removal of foreign bodies should be done as soon as possible to avoid secondary complications such as translocation‚ bleeding and infection‚” he said.