In a rare surgery, doctors in India have succeeded in replacing the disfigured nose of a 12-year-old boy with a new one that was grown on his forehead, according to a news report.
Arun Patel, whose nose was disfigured owing to cartilage damage after he contracted pneumonia as a baby, got a new one almost a decade later, after doctors in Indore in Madhya Pradesh decided to conduct a four-phased plastic surgery on him.
The surgical team, led by Dr Ashwini Dash, took almost a year to finish the process.
"(We were) confident that the new nose would work properly like his other organs," Dash told BBC Hindi.
As a first step, a silicon ‘tissue expander’ was placed on the boy’s forehead and a chemical was then injected to help the tissues expand.
Cartilage from Patel’s chest was sourced in the next stage to grow a new nose on his forehead. It took three months for the new nose to fully form. In the final phase of the surgery, the artificial nose was removed from the forehead and grafted in its right place before repairing the boy’s forehead where it was grown.
A man who had damaged his nose in a traffic accident had got a new one implanted on his face in a similar surgery carried out in China in 2013.
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