This spinal injury should have killed him—so how did he survive?

Sometime cases are jaw-dropping. Sometimes they're truly unbelievable. You'll find yourself wondering what's fiction versus fantasy after seeing this patient's injuries.

Oren Gottfried, MD, a professor of neurosurgery at Duke University and a spine specialist, shared an Instagram Reel of a bewildering trauma case.

The Patient

A 33-year-old man involved in a high-speed motorcycle crash was thrown into a metal rail, explains Dr. Gottfried.

The Imaging

Once the young man was in the care of an emergency medical team, imaging showed that the impact essentially tore his thoracic spine in half. Dr. Gottfried says he suspects his aorta and spinal cord suffered the same injury.

The Assumptions

Dr. Gottfried didn’t mince words about what he thought when he first saw these x-rays.

“My best estimate is this patient would be dead at the scene,” he says in the video. “But if he did survive, he’d have a major spinal cord injury, with paralysis, and come in with respiratory failure or even catastrophic bleeding from an aortic injury."

Yet the patient defied every expectation. When he arrived at the emergency department, he was wide awake, fully alert, with no neurologic deficits. His only question? 'How’s my motorcycle, and when will I get out of the hospital?'

Ultimately, the patient had surgery to stabilize his spine. But this curious case left doctors with a lot of questions.

How can a patient cheat death?

From a clinical standpoint, his injuries should have been incompatible with survival, let alone normal neurologic function.

"Is it just that they're built differently, they're tougher—they have tougher parts?" questions Dr. Gottfried. "Or they're like a superhero, completely resistant to trauma? Is it just that they have many more lives to live—they're kind of like a cat? Or is it just sheer luck?"

What do you think saved his life?