Woman, 80, has lived her whole life without realizing she has a 3cm-long needle in her BRAIN – and the reason it’s there is horrifying

A Russian woman survived what was meant to be a fatal stabbing through her brain as an infant, leaving behind a 3-centimeter needle that doctors have just discovered.

The 80-year-old woman was the victim of a botched infanticide carried out by her parents during World War II when many families struggled to survive because of a lack of essential resources.

Doctors found the needle by luck when the woman underwent a CT scan of her brain for another, unspecified reason.

They opted not to remove the needle, which was not causing the woman any pain or other symptoms of a traumatic brain injury, adding that surgery could cause more problems. 

The three-centimeter-long needle was inserted through the woman’s soft spot at the top of her head as a newborn. She was the victim of a botched infanticide believed to have been carried out by her parents during the World War II-wrought famine in the Soviet Union

The needle inserted into her brain as a newborn entered through the soft spot in the top of her head called the fontanelle where it lodged in her parietal lobe, the region responsible for processing sensory information and learning to do complex tasks like math.

The 80-year-old murder survivor hails from Sakhalin, an island just north of Japan home to around 461,000 people.

The health department of Sakhalin said on the messaging app Telegram: ‘The needle penetrated her left parietal lobe, but it did not have the intended effect – the girl survived.’

She is believed to have been born in 1943, during the height of fighting on the Eastern front of the war when Russia – then the Soviet Union – was fending off German invasion to gain control of Stalingrad.

The Soviet Union was already in the midst of a long famine that is estimated to have killed some 11 million people. 

The situation was so dire that many families, knowing they would be unable to feed and take care of their newborns, resorted to killing them.

The Sakhalin health ministry added: ‘Such cases during years of famine were not uncommon.’

The needle was jabbed into the soft spot at the top of the newborn’s head. The fontanelle at the top of a baby’s head is where the two frontal and two parietal lobes meet, forming bony plates held together by strong fibrous tissue until eventually the plates meet and grow together.

Following what were meant to be deathly stabs into the baby’s brain, the fontanel would quickly close, hiding the traces of the crime, and the baby would die.

Sakhalin health officials said: ‘The patient’s health is not in danger; her condition is being monitored by the attending physician.’