Boy, 12, who banged his head playing football had part of his skull inserted in his stomach as doctors treated potentially deadly brain infection

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•     Lewis Smith had a crippling headache two weeks after playing with friends
•     Rushed to hospital with a fever and doctors found severe sinus infection
•     Immediately taken for 6-hour operation, where skull kept clean in stomach
•     It is an alternative to replacing bone with titanium, which could get infected

A 12-year-old boy who knocked his head during a football match had part of his skull preserved in his stomach as doctors operated on a life-threatening infection in his brain.

Lewis Smith thought he was concussed when, two weeks after a match with friends, his headache was only getting worse.

But half-way through a family holiday in Cornwall, the pain was crippling, his forehead swelled, and his parents rushed him to hospital.

To their horror, doctors discovered his brain was swelling up with a severe sinus infection.

Lewis was rushed into the theatre for an emergency six-hour operation to open his skull and remove the disease.

And in a bid to avoid any risk of worsening, they kept the severed bone clean by depositing it in his stomach.

It meant his brain was able to swell without pressurising the skull, which would have rendered him unconscious.

The bone remained in his stomach for two months before eventually being replaced the day before his 13th birthday.

His mother, Nicki, 44, said: 'It was so scary.

'We were none the wiser about Lewis' condition until we set off on holiday and I noticed his forehead had started to swell up.

'He had suffered a knock on the head playing football a couple of weeks before, so we thought it might have been related to that.