Indian-origin doc re-attaches British man's head to spine

London--

A British man, who had his head snapped off from his spine in a car crash, has survived after a team of neurosurgeons successfully re-attached his skull to his body in a rare surgery.

A media report on Sunday said Tony Cowan’s skull was re-attached to his spine using metal plates and bolts in the rare surgery led by Anand Kamat, a neurosurgeon of Indian origin.

Newcastle city-resident Cowan met with an accident on September 9 last year, when he lost control of his car as it hit a speed bump, crashing it into a telephone pole.

Cowan’s heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated by paramedics at crash site before being rushed to a hospital. The Brit sustained a fracture in his neck and a complete spinal cord injury that medics describe as almost "unsurvivable."

Cowan, however, did not sustain any brain damage from the crash though his head was only being held in place by tissue and muscle after it snapped off.