Doctors grow ‘forehead nose’ for Chinese transplant patient
Despite his perhaps bizarre appearance, a man in China who is growing a new nose on his forehead is the beneficiary of a rather common nose reconstruction technique.
The man suffered damage to his nose and an infection after a traffic accident, and the infection had eaten away at the cartilage in his nose, making it impossible to for doctors to fix his original nose. There was no alternative but for doctors to grow the man an entirely new nose on his forehead, according to Reuters.
The patient, identified only as Xiaolian according to Reuters, will have a new nose, but will be most vulnerable to rejection during the 18 months after his transplant.
Dr. Patrick Byrne, the director of Facial, Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, said forehead skin is used to help reform noses because it is the closest match to skin on the nose. However, usually the nose is reformed during surgery instead of on a patient’s forehead.
“My guess would be that they felt that the tissue in the nose was so damaged they had to use the forehead skin on the interior part of the nose,” said Byrne. “It’ll be a real nose and [have a] breathing passage way.”
“He should be able to smell, the smell receptors are pretty high in the nose,” said Bryne.
This method is not that different from plastic surgery techniques used all the time, said Dr. David Cangello, an attending plastic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan, Eye Ear and Throat Hospital in New York.
“I would call it a different take on a principles that we commonly use in reconstruction,” Cangello said.
Watch the video here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/video-man-new-nose-grown-2299475
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