Man impaled on 1.5-meter steel bar in east China survives

A man has miraculously escaped death after a 1.5-meter steel bar pierced his body from groin to skull in east China's Shandong Province on Tuesday.

The 46-year-old construction worker, surnamed Zhang, woke up Thursday, weak but conscious, according to doctors at Shandong University's Qilu Hospital in Jinan, the provincial capital.

Zhang was working at a construction site when he fell from a height of five meters on to the steel bar.

Firefighters were able to cut the bar and accompany the man to hospital. An xray showed that the steel bar had only just missed his skull, trachea, heart, carotid artery and liver.

"This is a very rare accident," said Sang Xiguang, head of the emergency surgery department.

Surgeons from nine departments worked with firefighters to remove the bar from the man's body. The emergency operation took more than seven hours.

By 1:00 a.m. Wednesday, the man was wheeled out of the operating room and transferred to intensive care unit.

"Luckily the bar barely touched his vital organs," said Zhang Yuan, attending doctor of the neurosurgery department, "The wound was so large, he might not have made it if he was in poor health."

"One wrong move, and the operation would have failed," he said.

"Everyone was exhausted by the end of the seven hours," Sang said.

The man is now stable, doctors said, but he will remain under close observation for two weeks as the risk of infection is high.

"We will try our best to help him recover," said Sang. Endi