Canadian doctors make scar-free plastic surgery possible

A team of doctors has conducted what they say is the first scar-free facial reconstruction in the history of plastic surgery in Canada.

Led by Daniel Borsuk from Hopital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, a hospital in Montreal, the doctrs accomplished the operation in an adult patient in about eight hours.

The doctors carried out the facial reconstruction using virtual surgery and 3D models, removing a vascularised piece of pelvic bone and reshaping it to adapt it to the rest of the face before transplanting it through the inside of the mouth, with no scars left at all.

In the past, this type of procedure would have necessitated multiple interventions and left one or more scars, the doctors said.

"The operation, during which the latest technologies were applied to reconstructive plastic surgery, sends a real message of hope to anyone who feels they must simply live with this type of disfigurement and who often feels so self-conscious that they isolate themselves," Borsuk explained in a statement released by University of Montreal on Wednesday.