Summary
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 paintbrush 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 paintbrush, 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.
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Mandat, T., Honey, C., Peters, D. et al. Artistic assault: an unusual penetrating head injury reported as a trivial facial trauma. Acta Neurochir (Wien) 147, 331–333 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00701-004-0429-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00701-004-0429-7