Doctors Remove Ammunition From Soldier’s Head

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Doctors Remove Ammunition From Soldier’s Head
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: April 9, 2010

http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2010/04/10/world/10military-span/10military-span-articleLarge.jpg

United States Air Force
A CAT scan shows a 14.5 millimeter high explosive round which was removed from the scalp
of an Afghan National Army soldier at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistn.

WASHINGTON — The patient arrived in critical condition last month at the Bagram Air Base hospital in Afghanistan, with what American military doctors at first thought was an all too typical war injury: metal shrapnel from an improvised bomb lodged in his head.

A CAT scan showed that the piece of metal, about two and a half inches long, was probably a cartridge fragment — again, not at all unusual.

But as the patient, an Afghan soldier in his 20s, was prepared for surgery, the chief radiologist, Lt. Col. Anthony Terreri, took a closer look at the CAT scan. Stunned, he realized the object was an explosive round, primed to go off.

“It looks like we have a problem here,” he announced.

To say the least.

In a joint telephone interview from Bagram on Friday, members of the Air Force medical team recounted the hours that followed Dr. Terreri’s discovery.

Maj. John Bini, a trauma surgeon and a veteran of homemade-bomb injuries from two previous deployments in Iraq, immediately evacuated the operating room. Only the anesthesiologist, Maj. Jeffrey Rengel, who put on body armor, was left to watch the patient.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/world/asia/10military.html?ref=world