Doctors Implant Boy’s Nose After Reconstructing It On His Forehead.

Doctors in Indore, India have successfully replaced a 12-year-old boy’s nose with a new one after growing it on his forehead.

Surgeons performed the rare plastic surgery by reconstructing the nose on his forehead and then implanting it at the original place on his face, NDTV reported.

Arun Patel is from India’s Ujjain district. His nose was badly damaged when he suffered from pneumonia as a baby.

Due to a side-effect from an injection taken a month after his birth, the cartilage around his nose was disfigured, making it look like his nose had disappeared. The missing cartilage made his condition worse and hard for doctors to fix.

The team of doctors in Indore spent more than a decade looking for a solution until a rare four-phased plastic surgery was accepted.

Dr Ashwini Dash, who led a team of doctors to perform the surgery said the unique method was to first reconstruct the nose on the boy’s forehead and later on implant it at its proper position on his face.

The Chief Surgeon said this rare surgery was performed in four phases which took one year to be completed.

“A normal rhinoplasty was not possible on Arun’s face as his nose had almost disappeared. Therefore, we decided to perform a special plastic surgery on him, which is medically called as ‘pre-fabricated forehead flap rhinoplasty’,” the 42-year-old surgeon said.

“During the first phase of the surgery, a special silicon ’tissue expander’ was put on the forehead of the boy. A special chemical was put in it so that the tissues on the forehead can expand,” he said.

“In the second phase, some cartilage from the lower part of chest of the boy was taken out and an artificial nose was reconstructed out of it and placed on the forehead for three months so that blood circulation like in any other body part may begin there and all its tissues become active.

During the third phase, the nose grown on Arun’s forehead was removed and implanted at the original place on the face and joined with every minute vein so that it may have normal blood circulation,” Dr Dash said.

“In the fourth phase of the surgery, the place on the boy’s forehead where the nose was grown was normalised.”

The surgeon added: “We were keeping a close watch on the nose implanted in the last one year and if they find any deformation in future, they would take necessary steps to correct it through surgery.”

It’s a wonderful moment for the lucky boy Arun, who is said to be a class VI student. His joy knows no bounds for the new nose on his face.

“I did not have the courage to look at myself in the mirror in the absence of the nose. I would always walk on roads with my head down. In school, the children used to be afraid of me and made fun of me. But, now after getting a new nose, I can face the people with self-confidence,” he said.