Bosch drill used for brain surgery


Here’s something you don’t hear every day… for anyone wanting a really high-quality drill, the Bosch brand reportedly has the endorsement of a Russian brain surgeon.

According to a story in The Times, Henry Marsh, a consultant at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London, visits Kiev twice a year to assist his colleague Igor Petrovich at a neurology clinic.

In Britain Mr Marsh is accustomed to using a £30,000 medical drill driven by compressed air. But equipment in the Ukrainian capital is so scarce that the men have resorted to a £30 Bosch RSR960 to drill holes through patients’ skulls:

Surgeon uses DIY drill to perform brain operations

…Many of the operations, such as those to remove tumours, are done without general anaesthetic – a common practice in this type of surgery. By talking to the patient, surgeons can gauge precisely how far they can go without damaging vulnerable parts of the brain.

Mr Marsh has now taken a drill designed for medical use to Kiev. “I’m not recommending that we should all use Bosch do-it-yourself drills in England,” Mr Marsh said. “But it shows how with improvisation you can achieve a lot. Read on here…