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| Phillip Hughes - Cricket - Australia Cricket Boy - Hughes injury - Phillip Hughes Injury |
Hughes suffered extremely rare, freak injury to neck
Phillip Hughes was the victim of a freakish accident, the kind that is rarely seen in any sphere of life and has only once before been recorded as the result of being struck by a cricket ball. When Hughes was hit in the neck by a ball during the Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and South Australia at the SCG on Tuesday, one of the main arteries to his brain was compressed, and such trauma can often be immediately fatal. Hughes initially stood for a second or two before collapsing forwards onto the ground, as players rushed to his assistance and called for medical help. "Phillip took the blow at the side of the neck and as a result of that blow his vertebral artery, one of the main arteries leading to the brain, was compressed by the ball," Peter Brukner, the Cricket Australia doctor, said on Thursday. "That caused the artery to split and for bleeding to go up into the brain. He had a massive bleed into his brain. This is frequently fatal at the time. "However, Phillip was resuscitated and then managed by, in particular, Dr John Orchard, the Cricket NSW doctor, and paramedical staff, and we were fortunate enough to have Dr Tim Stanley, an intensive care specialist from Newcastle, who was in the crowd and came and helped. They all did an excellent job of keeping Phillip alive and he was able to be transported by ambulance to hospital in reasonable condition." Hughes was transported to the nearby St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and was quickly admitted for surgery. Dr Tony Grabs, the trauma director at St Vincent's, said it was necessary to immediately relieve the pressure on Hughes' brain from the compressed artery. "The head injury that he suffered was catastrophic," Dr Grabs said. "He arrived well intubated and [had been] resuscitated very well. It was our recognition that the first priority in this situation is to get an urgent CAT scan of the head to determine what we can do. This CAT scan occurred very early and it was recognised early that we had to make an intervention into the brain to actually help get the pressure down in the brain.
