CHENNAI:
Doctors at Gleneagles Global Health City reconstructed the jaw of a 20-year-old woman from Sudan, with the help of 3D printing technology and CT scan image, recently.
The doctors created an exact three-dimensional mirror image of the opposite side to reconstruct an entire jaw bone model. The patient had approached the hospital with deformity of the lower jaw, following surgery on her jaw bone.
“The patient underwent excision of a benign tumour of the jaw a few months back at Sudan. During the surgery, a segment of the lower jaw bone was removed and the gap was bridged with the plate, which led to major deformity. As a result, she could not close her mouth and had difficulty in swallowing due to lack of skeletal support,” hospital sources said.
The team headed by Dr Selva Seetha Raman, planned for the reconstruction of the jaw bone and restore her appearance. The challenging part was that the length of the bone to be reconstructed, was around 8 cm. Doctors took a bone from the leg, along with its blood supply and transferred the same to the jaw. Then the harvested bone was shaped using specialized cutting instruments to match the missing segment, using the 3D model. To establish the blood supply to the bone, the blood vessel of the bone flap was connected to the blood vessels of the neck.
After the bone flap settled, the doctors reconstructed the teeth with the help of the maxillofacial team.
