The boy had lost the brake lever when he fell from his bicycle at the age of 10. He kept playing sport and living a normal life without problems, while the metal piece travelled from his left flank through a small wound into the lumbar region.

At 13 he began to feel pain in his right leg and later a vaguer discomfort in both legs. Neurological tests showed no abnormalities, but a spine X-ray revealed an elongated, curved metal object in the lumbar region, to the left of the spine. A CT scan reconstructed its path: about 5.5 centimetres long, with its tip against the foramen between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, the canal through which a nerve root passes. Because of its position, the boy was referred to the Bambino Gesù hospital in Palidoro, where the orthopaedic team carried out the high-complexity operation to remove it.