Doctors in the US are hailing the survival of a boy who fell head-first from a tree onto a meat skewer as a “one-in-million” escape.

Xavier Cunningham was punctured from the face to the back of the neck after falling from a tree house onto the rotisserie skewer in Kansas.

Xavier had been playing in the tree when he was attacked by a swarm of insects.

Dr Koji Ebersole, the lead neurologist who treated the boy, said it is a miracle that the skewer missed his brain, spinal cord and a two major arteries.

“These are two critical blood vessels that go to the brain – they supply that entire half of the brain and this thing is immediately adjacent to them so we were really worried about significant vessel injury.

“If this was a millimetre closer it probably would have been an unsurvivable injury.

“That trajectory is essentially one-in-a-million, I just can’t believe that.”

Dr Ebersole said that when he was first shown the X-Ray images he was “amazed that he was alive, let alone awake and talking.”

Xavier’s mother said she ran to help when she heard her son’s screams after the accident on Sunday, and remembers him telling her: "I'm dying, mom."

Luckily there was no active bleeding – giving the hospital time to get a team in place for Sunday morning surgery.

Dr Ebersole said the skewer had to be pulled out perfectly straight – with any errors potentially making things much worse for Xavier.

“The most impressive thing about the story is how this thing could pass so deep through that part of the body and not hit something critical,” he said.

“I don’t know how the kid could be so lucky.”

Doctors believe that Xavier could completely recover from his ordeal.