Head injuries should be promptly examined and treated to avoid potentially life-threatening complications.

A deaf 29-year-old Yemeni student has suffered chronic headaches and persistent ear discharges for 18 years because a previous head wound was only cleaned by hospital staff.

The symptoms disappeared and he partially regained his hearing after doctors at Aster Hospital in Bengaluru, India operated on him last month and safely removed the bullet lodged in his ear, deep inside the temporal bone, Nesofindia.com reports.

The patient was apparently shot in the crossfire when two armed groups shot it out when he was 10 years old, and the bullet was not removed by the doctors who treated him.

More recently, a Brazilian medical student was celebrating with friends on New Year’s Eve in the beach of Cabo Frio, near Rio De Janeiro, when something hit his head, causing it to bleed.

Mateus Facio, 21, thought someone threw a stone at him as a bad joke.

A doctor who was with the group helped stop the bleeding and put ice on the wound, the New York Post reported.

Facio then resumed celebrating, swimming in the ocean and partying on the beach with his pals for the next four days. While driving home to Juiz de Fora from Rio, he started having arm spasms and was brought to a hospital.

The doctors Facio consulted told him of their shocking findings.

There was a 9 mm bullet in his head that “was compressing the brain in an area close to the region responsible for the movement of the right arm,” neurosurgeon Flávio Falcometa said.

Mateus subsequently underwent a two-hour operation that safely removed the bullet. The bullet was forwarded to police in Cabo Frio to find out who shot Facio, who fortunately survived the serious injury.