A one-year child in China barely missed death after a steel rod pierced his skull from the back of his head during an accident.

The child was playing outside when he slipped and fell backwards before landing on a metal bar protruding from a manhole cover, his father said.

He was rushing to hospital and after examining his injury with a CT scan, doctors found that the metal stick had been about five millimetres (0.2 inches) away from puncturing the young patient’s blood vessels.

The terrifying incident occurred in the Jinan city of Shandong province on Thursday.

The father said that his son had been playing outside before suddenly slipping on a wet road and falling backwards.

“I ran over to check on him,” the parent told Pear Video. ‘[I thought] it was not good because it had rammed into [his head].’

The horrified father cut the steel rod off the manhole cover with a pair of pliers and took his son to a local hospital.

During an hour-long emergency operation, surgeons successfully removed the pole from the toddler’s head with the help of a microscope.

The young patient is said to have been in stable condition while being treated at the Jinan hospital.