WASHINGTON — A U.S. military doctor removed a live round of ammunition from the head of an Afghan soldier in an unusual and harrowing surgery.

Doctors say a 14.5 millimeter unexploded round — more than 2 inches long — was removed from the scalp of an Afghan National Army soldier at the Bagram Air Field hospital last month.

When the Afghan soldier, in his 20s, arrived at the base, doctors thought it was shrapnel or the spent end of some sort of round, said Lt. Col. Anthony Terreri, a radiologist deployed from Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

But as he reviewed a CAT scan of the soldier, he realized it was a much bigger problem, according to an Air Force news release.

Neurosurgeon Maj. John Bini had the operating room evacuated, the surrounding hallways were secured, and he and anesthesiologist, Maj. Jeffrey Rengel, put on body armor for the surgery.

Bini and Rengel were joined in the operating room by a member of a bomb disposal team. And after Bini removed the round from the patient’s head, the bomb technicians took it away.

Bini said that while there have been similar cases of unexploded ordnance being removed from patients, this was the first such case he knows of in the Afghanistan war, which started in late 2001.

The patient is continuing to improve, the Air Force statement said.