Lifesaving Trauma Surgery

Baptist Health Paducah: Lifesaving Trauma Surgery

Neurosurgeon GRAHAM HALL describes the surgery that changed the life of Edward Frye after he suffered brain and facial injuries in a traumatic car accident.

Lifesaving Trauma Surgery Health Talks Transcript

Edward Frye:

We were going back to Benton. I was moving some stuff around in the floorboard. I looked up and saw the car hauler, smacked my partner on the arm and I said “Hey!” and that’s pretty much the last thing I remember.

Graham Hall, MD, Neurosurgeon:

So, this was a surgery that was done pretty late at night, probably around 8 or 9 o’clock at night. It was actually a combination — it was a complex surgery, just combined both with ENT and Neurosurgery. Basically, we took his forehead and flipped his forehead down and then removed the front part of his skull off and fixed his facial fractures from above as well as repaired the dura and the lining of the brain because he had tears just to the covering of the brain itself, and then put it all back together. He had a gaping hole, too, in the forehead, and Dr. Jones was able to put a skin patch there to fix it as well.

Frye:

I was just this side of death. It literally crushed my face … I had a big hole in my head. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Graham Hall and the surgical teams that worked on me, I wouldn’t be standing here today.

Dr. Hall:

Changing people’s lives for the better — that’s the biggest draw for neurosurgery to me — being able to improve people’s lives and really turn things around for the better. That’s the most gratifying thing.

Frye:

I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.