Vietnam doctors temporarily save neonate stabbed in head with knife Doctors carry out an operation at the Ho Chi Minh City Children's Hospital 1 to save the life of a 12-day-old baby who was stabbed in the head by a stranger while receiving pneumonia treatment at a hospital in the Mekong Delta on August 8, 2015.Tuoi Tre Ho Chi Minh City doctors on Saturday managed to carry out an operation to temporarily save the life of a 12-day-old baby who was stabbed in the head by a stranger while receiving pneumonia treatment at a hospital in the Mekong Delta. The surgeons took a 30-centimeter-long knife out of the head of the infant following a three-hour surgery at the Ho Chi Minh City Children's Hospital 1, around seven hours after the newborn baby was hospitalized. The child was stabbed by a woman who slept in an empty bed in the room shared by the baby and his mother and many others at the Vinh Long Province General Hospital earlier on Saturday, according to Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, head of the neonatal resuscitation department of the hospital. Those in the room thought the woman, Nguyen Thi Van, 51, from the neighboring province of Ben Tre, was taking care of someone else being treated in a room nearby until she got up at 3:40 am and tried to steal something from the room, Tam told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, citing a family member of the child. She stabbed the baby with her knife after Vo Thi Hong Duyen, the mother of the child, discovered her stealing and shouted out for help, the doctor said. With the help of other people and hospital guards, Van was arrested and detained at the infirmary due to suicidal signs, news websiteVnExpress reported. The child was admitted to the Ho Chi Minh City hospital at 6:45 am for lung inflammation and a seriously bleeding wound caused by the stab in the skull through the eye socket. The hospital then carried out an emergency surgery after snap testing and a medical consultation between its doctors and neurosurgery specialists from another infirmary. When taking out the knife, doctors saw the wound cut into the skull and the brain and a portion of the blade, about 11cm long, penetrate the baby's brain.   This knife was used by Nguyen Thi Van, 51, from the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre, to stab the 12-day-old baby in the head at the Vinh Long Province General Hospital. Photo: Tuoi Tre According to Doctor Dao Trung Hieu, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Children's Hospital 1, this is the first time the infirmary has received such a young patient with complicated brain injury caused with a knife. Because of the dangerous location of the blade in the brain of the child, the newborn baby might have become paralyzed, suffered respiratory failure, and even died when the knife was removed, Dr. Hieu said. Doctors well controlled the bleeding when conducting the surgery and the baby was transferred to the neonatal care unit at 1:40 pm yesterday afternoon, he added. Neonatal resuscitation department chief Tam said as the child is suffering pneumonia, his health condition is worsened by the severe brain injury. The hospital has used three kinds of antibiotics on the baby at the same time to prevent infection, he added. It is hard to assess the baby's health condition, as his life is still being threatened despite the existential signs like a stable pulse and blood pressure, the doctor said. TUOI TRE NEWS