Trepanation- the act of drilling, cutting, or scrapping a hole in the skull for medical purposes.
Trepanation was practiced for thousands of years from Ancient Greece to Pre-Colombian Peru.
Trepanation was preformed after a traumatic head injury to clean up skull fractures and relive pressure on the brain. Trepanned skulls can be found worldwide but a lot have been discovered in Peru due to its dry climate (the dry climate preserved the skulls well).
3 people (1 Neurologist Dr. David Kushner and 2 Bioarcheologists John Verano and Anne Titelbaum) examined 59 skulls from different parts of Peru that dated from 400 BC to 1,500 AD. “The outcomes were amazing.” Survival percentages of the different parts of Peru ranged from 40% all the way up to 91%.
According to Civil War Medical Records, 46% to 56% of cranial surgery patients died compared to just 17% to 25% of Inca Era patients.
Some of the differences in survival rate may be due to the nature of the patient’s injury before the surgery. Civil War soldiers were treated in very unsanitary conditions which promoted infections. (If there was smooth bone around the hole that meant healing after the surgery)