Czech neurosurgeons have remedied as the first in the world a broken first cervical vertebra, one of the most complex parts of the spine, without incision, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) said on Wednesday.

Chief doctor Petr Suchomel has already presented the unique operation at a few world congresses and sent an article describing it to the U.S. "Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine" last week, the paper said.

If the journal publishes it, Suchomel's world premiere will be confirmed, according to the paper.

The operation was performed on a 47-year-old man whose first cervical vertebra was broken when he fell down from a ladder, HN said.

The neurosurgeons first inserted a special one-millimeter thick guide wire through the skin at the back of the neck that also penetrated the broken vertebra, it said.

In the next step, they drilled a small hole with a two-millimeter hollow drill along the wire that also led through the broken vertebra. They inserted a hollow screw in the hole that penetrated the vertebra with the help of the wire, and screwed up the broken vertebra, HN added.

During the whole operation, the patient was repeatedly tomograph checked to see that the operation is entirely precise, the paper said.

Suchomel said this surgery rules out various negative effects other methods have and that the patient can return to normal life quickly.

The surgery was conducted in October 2005 already, but Suchomel said the doctors had to wait one and a half years before the vertebra was completely healed up.

(Xinhua News Agency September 11, 2008)