Surgeon Re-Attatches Man's Head

Just a few months ago, Parra's car was hit by a drunken driver and his head was almost completely severed from his body, with only his spinal cord keeping it connected.
Parra barely recalls what happened. "I just remembered hearing someone screaming," Parra told Good Morning America. "They said it was my friend but I can't tell you because I wasn't there 100 percent."

Parra was rushed from the scene to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix.

Doctors had never seen such injuries. It almost didn't matter that he had a broken clavicle, pelvis, tailbone and ribs. They were stunned to learn of the injury to his neck that technically ripped off his head.

His skull was ripped from the cervical spine, detaching Parra's head from the neck.

Full Story: abcnews.go.com...

he is the luckiest SOB alive

Lucky???

Sorry I would rather be dead... Then I would be lucky...

Oh my GOD!! No WAY!! That guy is one lucky SOB.

[edit on 4-10-2005 by Thomas Crowne]

Okay... lemme 'splain here, and it won't seem so weird.

His skull was detached from his spinal column.

The arteries and veins and muscles in his neck were intact and were held together inside the skin. It wasn't like someone took a chainsaw and sawed through most of his neck, leaving the bloody stump spouting blood and hanging on only by its spinal cord.

Still, the guy's lucky he didn't die.

Why didn't they reattach the head to another body? he could have got a better one.

I am sur there are heaps of spare bodies lying around, or they could have used one from the govt, after all they are dead from the neck up....

Lucky would mean he doesn't have severe brain damage from the lack of blood flow and he doesn't wake up strapped in enormous medical debt.

There was a special on the discovery channel about a boy who had his head decapitated minus the spinal cord, you could literally lift it and move it left and right.

Not the first time it's happened, but indeed a miracle those folks are alive

This has happened before according to my google search. Some very strange though.

Can you keep a severed head alive?
Yes! In 1998, the US government granted a patent for a device that could keep a severed head alive after it was surgically removed from the body. According to the patent holder, a severed human head could be kept alive indefinitely, with the device and drugs. It must be severed from the body at the top of the neck, mounted upright, and attached to a mass of plastic tubes. Here

Anyway, the fatal blow in a beheading induces immediate unconsciousness, even though the brain may not actually expire for several minutes. Even if the head were somehow miraculously reattached to the body, a phenomenon known as "retrograde amnesia," common in accident victims, would most likely prevent the subject from remembering anything about the event. Here

Of course this is the kind of things you can find on search. This story if true would be a fantastic thing indeed.


[edit on 3-10-2005 by Harry55]

Im pretty astounded by the fact that this didnt leave him totally brain-dead!

I was watching van helsing yesterday, and I wondered if there is a Dr. Frankenstein out there, taking advantage of todays technologies.....this case can make the argument we can do things today which are basically miracles...so how far to the next step ?

man! if that's true, its one heck of a miracle.

old thread, thanks to whoever must have bumped this, great find.


--Kit.