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14-year-old boy has become the first patient in the US to undergo a successful
nose transplant using 3D printing technology after his face was disfigured when
he fell on a live power line.
Reconstructive
surgery on the human nose is not uncommon, but until now, doctors in the US had
not been able to replicate and restore the body part to its full functionality.
Dallan Jennet, a 14-year-old boy from the Marshall Islands, a country that lies
near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, is the first patient in the US to
undergo a procedure that did just that, Fox Newsreported.
Jennet’s face became disfigured when he fell onto a live power line aged
9. Earlier this year he flew to New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai,
in New York City, to undergo multiple surgeries that would restore his sense of
smell and taste.
“The procedure is akin to a ‘nose transplant’ in that we were able to
replace the nose with a functional implant,” lead physician Tal Dagan, associate adjunct surgeon, said in a
Mount Sinai blog post. ”This procedure may be a
breakthrough in facial reconstruction because the patient will never have to
deal with the standard issues of transplantation, such as tissue rejection or a
lifetime of immunosuppressive therapies,” he said.
Jennet’s first procedure, in early 2015, took place in the Marshall
Islands, where doctors input expanders under the remaining skin of his nose to
make room for the reconstructed body part. Benicia, California-based nonprofit
Canvasback Missions Inc, an organisation that provides health care and health
education to the Pacific Islands, funded Jennet and his mother’s travel and medical expenses to New York.
To carry
out the subsequent surgeries, Dagan and Dr Grigoriy Mashkevich, assistant
professor of Otolaryngology, Division of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery at Mount Sinai, collaborated with Oxford Performance Materials Inc, a
Windsor, Connecticut-based 3D printing company. The team created Jennet’s 3D nose graft by replicating the structure of his family’s noses.
For the
first 16-hour operation in New York, doctors used a laser-based technology to
analyse his skin. They then harvested blood vessels and tissues from the boy’s thigh, removed excess scar tissue, inserted the graft, and
reconstructed the skin over the 3D implant. They carried out four more
surgeries, and Jennet attended follow-up appointments between June and October.
The
surgeries were successful, and doctors said the 3D-printed implant will grow
with him preventing the need for
additional reconstructive procedures.
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