> Suleiman Hassan, a 12-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank, suffered what is known as an internal decapitation, with his skull detached from the top vertebrae of his spine — officially known as a bilateral atlanto occipital joint dislocation, according to The Times of Israel.

My guess is, the nerves and blood vessels were still connected but nothing was holding them in place.

Also, it looks like about 1/3 of people survive these [1, 2, 3]. So this isn’t a “first known success”, but still pretty impressive [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15299.... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanto-occipital_dislocatio... Talk,cases result in immediate death. [3] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-internal-decapitati...

It is a bit misleading. He suffered internal decapitation. That means the skull is separated from the spinal column but the tissue around the spinal column is intact. So technically his head wasn't ever detached from his body. But his skull was detached from his spine. This is usually fatal. Even when it isn't fatal, it is generally accompanied by severe spinal cord damage. The fact that this kid is walking is amazing. Though it sounds like he may not have had a complete internal decapitation, so partly it is that the kid got lucky and partly a great surgical team.

Better URL is likely https://www.timesofisrael.com/hadassah-surgeons-reattach-boy... to explain what's going on.

It's an internal decapitation so more work spent on stabilizing the two halves so that things can fuse back into place.