A doctor has provided a fascinating insight to a series of rare X-ray images showing the impact of a gunshot wound to the head - and how people can still survive.
8-year-old Sanaa Hill from Jackson, Mississippi, was doing homework at the Boys and Girls Club when a stray bullet hit her in the head in 2010.
In that same year and in that same city, Jackson State University researcher Andrea Scott was shot twice in the back of the head during an on-campus robbery.
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And incredibly so, both Hill and Scott made a full recovery.
Dr. Domenic Esposito - director of neurotrauma at UMC - has explained why the duo were able to survive such a horrific shot.
While taking a look at a series of X-ray images during a 16 WAPT News report, the doctor - who did not treat the pair - said they may still be alive today because of fast medical attention and because the pieces of bullets are still in their heads.
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The medical professional said the majority of his patients who were shot in the head had survived.
He says because there are better antibiotics available now, compared with 20 years ago, doctors can use that medicine to treat the wound - instead of surgery that can be risky for the patient.
"In the past, there was a theory that you had to take out every fragment of bone, every piece of the projectile, but the bullet," he told the ABC affiliate in 2011.
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"And that actually could take a patient who might have done fairly well without such a radical treatment and turn them into an individual that did not do as well as they could have done."
Dr Esposito also noted that the odds are not good when the bullets pass through the centre of the brain.
Thankfully, Scott and Hill's bullets did not pass through their brains.
However, a unique case was when a teenager survived a gunshot injury to his head, in which he lost almost half of his brain.
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Ahad Israfil was just 14 in 1987, when he was shot in the head by his employer while he was at work.
He was rushed to hospital where he underwent a five-hour long operation in a desperate attempt to save his life.
The injury he sustained destroyed most of one of his cerebral hemispheres as well as his skull, and doctors didn’t have much hope for his survival.
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Dr Raymond Poelstra, who treated Israfil on the night he was shot, told Guinness Primetime: “That particular injury was probably the worst gunshot injury that I have ever seen. The initial thought was, this young man probably won’t make it, this young man probably won’t survive.”
Despite the severity of his injuries, Israfil went on to make a somewhat miraculous recovery and was able to regain much of his mental capacity.
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/@16WAPTNews / ABCTopics: Crime, US News, Health