Doctor freezes man's skull, saves his life

A UTAH man had a 90 to 95 percent chance of dying after shattering his skull in more than 10 places until a neurosurgeon removed both sides of his head and froze it.

Kyle Johnson’s brain swelled uncontrollably after he fell off a longboard - essentially a surfboard on wheels - while travelling about 60km/h.

Dr Blake Welling of McKay-Dee Hospital in Utah decided to perform the risky surgery.

“We elected to take Kyle to surgery and remove each side of his head,” Dr Welling told FOXNews.com.

“It’s called a bilateral decompressive craniectomy. It’s something that neurosurgeons do as a last ditch effort.

“Most neurosurgeons do a decompressive craniectomy on one side of the head, where the trauma was.

“In this case, Kyle had such a global brain injury that we needed to take both sides of his head off, and you just leave a small strip of bone right down the middle.”

Dr Welling and his team removed Mr Johnson’s fractured skull, put it back together with micro-screws and plates, and then put it in a freezer to prevent the bone from becoming brittle.

Mr Johnson was placed in a drug-induced coma for about three weeks while doctors monitored his brain swelling. After the swelling went down, Dr Welling put the bone flaps back into place, and it took Mr Johnson about another week to wake up.

“I wasn’t quite sure what we were going to be left with,” Dr Welling said.

“When people have injuries like this I thought he may have a significant disability in terms of having to talk and walk again and learning his cognitive function. But low and behold, Kyle woke up and his lights gradually went back on.”

Dr Welling said by all purposes, Mr Johnson should have died.

“He had a very high mortality rate,” he said.

“I told him sometimes we’re left with really terrible results, but in your case you have a guardian angel, you have something to live for."

Although Mr Johnson did not require any real physical therapy, he is currently undergoing cognitive therapy to help with memory loss and things like multi-tasking.

“It’s something that I do not have the ability to do right now,” he said.

“If you put two color crayons in front of me, say blue and green, I really cannot think of both crayons. I can only think of one at a time and even that is a struggle. So, for therapy, we’ve been doing more mind exercises if you will.” ...

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