Horror in Turkey

Dentist drilled a screw directly into the brain

The man had little to laugh about after the operation - it could have been fatal.(Bild: APA/dpa/Julian Stratenschulte)

The stuff of nightmares for many dentists: During an actually harmless visit to the practice, a man was supposed to have an implant inserted. However, the procedure went disastrously wrong and almost ended fatally.

The 40-year-old man came to the practice because of acute toothache. The doctor did not hesitate for long, extracted a tooth and recommended that he have an implant inserted immediately.

Patient had complete confidence
"The doctor told me that he had been a doctor for 24 years and was an expert in this field. We trusted him and left this task to him," the patient told "Hürriyet".

The man had little to laugh about after the operation - it could have been fatal.(Bild: APA/dpa/Julian Stratenschulte)

Bones cracked "quite normally"
However, the routine procedure went badly wrong: shortly before the incident, the doctor explained to his assistant that a device was defective and that he would therefore perform the procedure manually. He then forcibly turned the screw into the jawbone. The patient noticed that bones were cracking, but the doctor said that this was normal.

The news portal "Politic Türk" shared the X-ray image showing the screw stuck in the head on the platform X (formerly Twitter):

What those involved were not yet aware of was that the doctor accidentally drilled a screw into the man's brain, as the Turkish news agency IHA reported. The man survived the ordeal.

Doctor disappears, does not want to perform emergency surgery
He screamed in pain after the doctor drilled through his jaw, he told IHA. "The screw got stuck in the area where the cerebrospinal fluid is located behind the eye wall," he explained. The doctor finally x-rayed him, discovered the mistake and immediately drove him to hospital himself. He then disappeared.

In an operation lasting several hours, the screw was removed and the patient was saved, IHA wrote. The father of two said that he had taken legal action against the doctor, who had so far refused to reimburse him for the treatment costs.