Real medical cases, explained by a doctor.
Almost every case turns on an interval. Each one is written up the same way: how the patient presented, what changed the assessment, how the team decided, and how it ended. Researched and reviewed by Dr. Eron Shehu.
Latest cases
All 44, by interval →- 23 daysin hospital after the attackThe bear went for his face, and left its tooth marks in his skullA man gathering pine nuts alone in a Siberian forest was attacked by a bear. He walked away and reached hospital nine and a half hours later, with his upper jaw torn loose and tooth furrows in his skull.
- 3 monthswith his ear cartilage in his abdomenThey saved his ear by keeping it inside his bellyA road accident tore off a 22-year-old's ear, and the wound was too damaged to sew it back. Surgeons buried its cartilage under the skin of his abdomen and brought it back to his head three months later.
- 24 huntil the marks fadedA lightning pattern spread across his skin, and was gone within a dayAn electrician was struck by an arc from a 20,000-volt unit he thought was switched off. Red, branching marks like a fern spread across his side, and within 24 hours they had vanished.
- 3 h 52 minto remove a 63.5 cm rodIt ran from his pelvis to his neck and missed every major vesselA 45-year-old man arrived stable, with abdominal pain. The scans showed a wooden rod running from his rectum to the right side of his neck, without cutting a single major blood vessel on the way.
- 6 weekswith the plate outside his legThe bone plate was screwed on outside his legA crocodile bit a 13-year-old boy and broke both bones of his lower leg through the skin. Working with limited resources, his surgeons sterilised a used bone plate and fixed it to the outside of his leg.
- 17 monthson the transplant listHe waited 17 months for a face that matched his ownA drunk driver's crash took Robert Chelsea's lips, part of his nose and his left ear. The first full face transplant in a Black patient took longer to arrange, because the donor had to match more than his tissue type.
Would you have caught it?
All games →Every case cites its source
Peer-reviewed reports where they exist, named at the foot of each article so you can read the original.
The diagrams are ours
Forty-three drawn for these articles, because the explanation usually needs a picture that does not exist yet. Browse them all, free to reuse with attribution.
Checked by a doctor
Sources are selected and verified by a doctor. Drafts are prepared with AI assistance and checked line by line against them before publication. How we work.
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