Metal hair claw pierces woman's head after traffic accident in China

SINGAPORE: For anyone who’s experienced the discomfort that sometimes comes with wearing a hair claw, the following scenario might be nightmare fuel. 

A 61-year-old woman sustained serious injury after being hit by a car while crossing the road in Chengdu, China.

The danger, however, wasn’t the impact of the crash, but her claw hair clip which pierced part of her scalp.

The Chengdu resident, known by her surname Du, landed on her head during the accident on Feb 3.

The impact of the fall caused her gold metal claw clip to “penetrate her scalp”, according to Chinese online news site 163.com. 

Du was conscious when she was admitted to hospital, Chinese news reports said, noting that half the hair claw still remained painfully lodged in her head. 

Through CT scan images, doctors at the General Medical 363 Hospital located remaining fragments of the clip, mere millimetres away from the brain stem and important nerves and blood vessels in Du’s brain. 

Three of the clip’s teeth had fully sunken into Du’s head, emergency physician Dr Tian Fengming told reporters on Feb 8.

Fortunately they did not reach her skull, making them easier to remove, he said.

But any slight mistake could still cause heavy bleeding and lead to “serious irreversible nerve damage”, he added, so removal efforts had to be precise.

“No mistakes were allowed,” he said. 

After administering an anaesthetic shot, Dr Tian and his team managed to fully remove the hair claw within 10 minutes.

“Fortunately, it was successfully removed and the patient’s condition has stabilised,” Dr Tian told reporters.

DANGEROUS IN CAR ACCIDENTS 

Claw clips are a popular daily fashion accessory for many women, useful for holding up hair. Unlike rubber bands, they don’t inflict stress onto the scalp or damage hair by pulling on strands. 

But hair claws, especially ones made of metal, can be especially dangerous as they are usually worn at the back of the head and become a serious health hazard when worn in a moving vehicle in the event of a collision, said Dr Tian. 

To highlight potential dangers, China’s National Fire and Rescue Administration used a honeydew in a safety video released last October, to demonstrate how the sharp clips could deeply pierce one’s head upon impact in a collision.

For Du, a seemingly innocuous hair accessory became a dangerous weapon - and her ordeal attracted the attention of many on social media. 

“This poor woman. It looks incredibly painful but also scary,” said a user with the handle Ruwen, on the Sina Weibo microblogging site. 

“Reading about this will give me nightmares. I am now officially terrified of my (hair claw) collection at home,” said another. 

“Someone please tell me that this was just a freak (one-time) accident and happens to only this one poor woman in a million,” said a user with the handle ponytar.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality. 

A similar accident last October, which also happened in Sichuan province, saw a 28-year-old woman, wearing a hair claw, suffer a serious skull fracture after she fell off her boyfriend’s electric bike.

She underwent two craniotomies and was left in a vegetative state, according to her family. 

And it’s not just happening in China - accounts of similar accidents have also been shared on TikTok. Earlier in January, a user with the handle @paisley.rileyyy shared videos of her hospital treatment following a serious car accident. 

The impact shoved her head backwards into a metal pole, thrusting a claw clip into her scalp - which required five head stitches. “I was very lucky, it could have been so much worse,” she said of the accident. 

A 19-year-old from the UK named Jeena Panesar, shared her terrifying hair claw ordeal last January. After crashing into a tree, her car skidded across the road and flipped over, resulting in her hair claw piercing her head, where it remained lodged until it was removed at a local hospital. 

It ended up leaving a 28cm gash running from the back of her scalp to her left eyebrow. 

Experts recommend people remove claw clips before getting into a car, in case of a crash.