14-Year-Old Receives First 3-D Printed Nose in US
Reconstructive surgery on the human nose isn’t uncommon, but until now, doctors in the United States haven’t 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 U.S. to undergo a procedure that does just that.
Jennet’s face became disfigured when he fell onto a live power line at age 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 . . .
Benicia, Calif.-based nonprofit Canvasback Missions Inc., an organization 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 3-D printing company. (Read more from “14-Year-Old Receives First 3-D Printed Nose in US” HERE)
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