Baby boy with half flat face and small ear deformity had successful surgery

Baby boy before and after ear and face plastic surgery - Photo: Provided by the hospital

The patient is NBN (5 years old), suffering from both hemifacial atrophy and congenital microtia.

Before that, N. had visited many places for examination but the doctors advised to apply the technique of ear shaping using rib cartilage, so he had to undergo surgery at least 2-4 times. At the same time, he had to wait until he was 10-12 years old to have a large enough chest and enough health for ear shaping surgery.

After that, if the patient wants to correct the face, he or she will need jaw surgery to treat facial asymmetry, which is also a major surgery with many risks of complications.

After learning, the family took the child to visit and consult at the cosmetic maxillofacial surgery department, Viet Duc Friendship Hospital.

After examination, the doctors advised performing small ear shaping technique using Medpor artificial cartilage and then grafting autologous fat rich in stem cells to compensate for the atrophied facial volume.

According to Dr. Nguyen Hong Ha - Head of the Department of Maxillofacial Plastic Surgery, Viet Duc Friendship Hospital, autologous fat grafting can be performed after ear reshaping surgery or combined at the same time with much fewer risks and complications than facial bone reshaping surgery.

At the same time, thanks to the application of modern microsurgery and cosmetic endoscopy techniques in one-stage ear reshaping and stem cell-rich autologous fat injection.

After the surgery, baby N. has new ears and a balanced face, helping her feel more confident as she prepares to enter first grade.

Doctor Ha added that with current hemifacial atrophy lesions, there are many treatment methods with different advantages and disadvantages.

Microsurgical fascioplasty can provide immediate fat volume. However, this fat is often unevenly distributed, and microsurgical surgery often lasts several hours with many risks of complications.

Maxillofacial bone stretching methods meet the need to increase bone size with little change in the covering soft tissue.

In addition, this method requires a long time of many bone intervention surgeries, so there are many risks and potential complications. With the classic autologous fat injection method, it can bring soft and uniform material to each concave or asymmetrical area on the face.

The disadvantage of the classic fat injection technique is that the injected fat often shrinks afterward, sometimes losing 60 - 80% of the injected volume, causing the patient to often have to perform 3 - 4 fat injections, which often do not achieve the desired effect.

"That's why in recent years we have researched, improved and applied stem cell-rich fat injection techniques in the treatment of hemifacial atrophy or facial asymmetry, improving the success rate and reducing the number of surgeries for patients.

In addition, autologous fat is also a biological material, so it is completely compatible and therefore has much less risk of rejection or complications than fillers, which are artificial products currently on the market," said Dr. Ha.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/be-trai-lep-nua-mat-di-tat-tai-nho-duoc-phau-thuat-thanh-cong-20240614101638808.htm