Brazilian man survives after 6-foot metal bar pierces skull

Washington - A Brazilian man’s life was saved after doctors removed a 6 feet metal bar, that had pierced his skull on Wednesday.

Construction worker Eduardo Leite, 24, was wearing a hard hat when the bar plunged five stories down, piercing the back of his skull through the hat and exiting between his eyes.

“They told me he was laying down (in the ambulance) with the bar pointing upward,” ABC News quoted Leite’s wife, Lilian Regina da Silva Costa as saying.

“He was holding it and his face was covered in blood. His look was as if nothing had happened.

“When he arrived he told the doctors he wasn’t feeling anything, no pain, nothing. It’s unbelievable,” she said.

Surgeons at Miguel Couto Hospital in Rio de Janeiro spent five hours to remove the bar from Leite’s brain.

“He was taken to the operating room, his skull was opened, they examined the brain and the surgeon decided to pull the metal bar out from the front in the same direction it entered the brain,” Luiz Alexandre Essinger, the hospital’s chief of staff, said.

“Today, he continues well, with few complaints for a five-hour-long surgery. … He says he feels little pain,” he said.

Ruy Monteiro, the hospital’s head of neurosurgery, said Leite had narrowly escaped the loss of one eye and paralysis on the left side of his body, telling the Globo TV network, that the bar entered a “noneloquent” area of his brain.

Leite is likely to remain hospitalized for at least two weeks.