Teen survives abdomen shark bite with world-first surgeries in Townsville | ABC NEWS

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:03]Sam Niue knows these hospital corridors all too well.

[00:00:09]>> [music] >> Today, he's here for his 22nd operation in just a few months.

[00:00:15]>> So, you're going to go off to sleep here. Hopefully, your last anesthetic for a while.

[00:00:19]>> As he scrubs up, Dr. Brendan O'Connor is optimistic this is Sam's last operation.

[00:00:26]>> Hopefully, his skin grafts have taken really well. Um and this will have been his 20th and final trip to theater.

[00:00:34]>> [music] >> Before his days revolved around operations and rehab, Sam Niue was living the life of any normal 14-year-old on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.

[00:00:45]>> Me and my cousin always sitting in a boat eating mangoes.

[00:00:50]And then we decided to go fishing and swimming.

[00:00:53]>> That swim almost proved [music] fatal when he was bitten by a shark.

[00:00:59]>> I just saw him laying on the rocks.

[00:01:02]And his left side was missing. My nephew took his shirt off and we wrapped up Sam. So, we used that as um a bandage.

[00:01:11]So, I was shoving his intestines back in and helping to wrap him up.

[00:01:15]>> He was then flown [music] to Townsville for emergency treatment. The start of many surgeries to save his life.

[00:01:22]>> A millimeter further and the the bowel would have been injured as well, which would have been a much more significant problem for Sam.

[00:01:29]>> There are a lot of shark species that occur uh in Torres Strait. And that includes the bull sharks uh and tiger sharks.

[00:01:36]And whilst there are some historical bites uh in the area, uh they are thankfully rare.

[00:01:40]>> Typically, when a victim survives a shark attack, it's because they've been bitten on the limbs.

[00:01:46]Now, in Sam's case, the bite actually exposed his internal organs and even grazed his hip bone, making his chances of survival extremely slim.

[00:01:55]>> As far as we're are Sam's injury is the most extensive injury certainly that's been published in the medical literature that someone has sustained and and managed to survive and have successfully reconstructed.

[00:02:09]>> But that reconstruction has been nothing short of epic. Doctors first cleared his open abdomen of contaminants before sealing the inner lining with negative pressure dressing. They then applied a biodegradable skin substitute. It acts as a scaffold allowing new blood vessels and tissues to grow into it. Multiple layers built up the thickness. A permanent mesh was also stitched to his pelvis and ribs creating internal support for his abdomen. It was topped off with a skin graft.

[00:02:41]>> Sam had a really significant injury but because he's young and fit and healthy otherwise, I think that just really helped.

[00:02:48]>> It took a month of intensive physio before he could walk again. Yet four months on, he's fighting fit.

[00:02:54]>> It make you feel like I I can do the same stuff as before the shark bit me. It's like a different me.