Builder finds nail in head

Surgeons say the nail could have killed Mr Smart

Builder Tony Smart walked around with a three-inch nail buried in his skull for a week - without realising it.

Mr Smart thought he had been scratched on the head when a workmate accidentally let off a nail gun.

I didn't even know the nail had been there until after the operation to get it out

Tony Smart

He only realised the full extent of his injury a week later after he collapsed and surgeons at the Hope Hospital in Manchester found a nail embedded in his skull.

Mr Smart, 38, of Newport, Gwent, said: "I had no headache, just a small cut on the top of my head."

He went to a local hospital immediately after the accident, but was sent home after having his wound cleaned.

'Lucky'

"I had no idea it was there. I wasn't in any pain. I didn't even know the nail had been there until after the operation to get it out," he said.

Andrew King, consultant neurosurgeon at Hope Hospital said: "When we saw it, we all went, 'Wow, that's extraordinary'.

"He is lucky it did not go into a vital part of the brain because paralysis would be a distinct possibility and he may have even risked death.

"All we had to do was make a hole and pull the nail out the way it came in, making sure we didn't cause too much bleeding, and controlling any infection."

Mr Smart, who spent three weeks in hospital and five months off work following the operation, is taking legal action against Caerphilly Miners' Hospital, where he was taken immediately after the accident.