January 16, 2008
Artistic assault:
This is a completely amazing case report published in Acta Neurochirurgica about a man who managed to get a paintbrush stuck in his brain during a fight.
The most astounding thing is that from the outside it only looked like he had a tiny cut on the eye.
Artistic assault: an unusual penetrating head injury reported as a trivial facial trauma.
Mandat TS, Honey CR, Peters DA, Sharma BR.
The authors report a case of penetrating head injury that presented with a deceptively mild complaint. To our knowledge, it is the first report of a paint brush penetrating the brain. The patient reported being punched in the left eye and presented with a minor headache, swelling around the left orbit, a small cut on the cheek and slightly reduced left eye abduction. After radiological evaluation, a penetrating head injury was diagnosed.
Under general anesthesia, through a lateral eyelid incision a 10.5 cm long paint brush, which had penetrated from the left orbit to the right thalamus, was removed. No post-operative infection was seen at six months follow-up. This brief report serves to highlight that penetrating brain injury can occur without neurological deficit and that a minimally invasive surgical approach was successful in avoiding any complications.
Link to Pubmed abstract.
