Doctors in Canada have successfully carried out scar-free facial reconstruction on an adult patient, the very first such procedure in the history of plastic surgery in the country.
In an eight-hour operation, a team led by Daniel Borsuk, a doctor at Hospital Maisonneuve-Rosemont 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, researchers 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," said Borsuk, also a professor at the University of Montreal.
Borsuk had already participated in a milestone moment in the history of reconstructive surgery when he was the only Canadian physician on an American face transplant team, researchers said.
In 2012, he took part in the most extensive face transplant ever conducted, on a 37-year-old man disfigured by a gunshot wound, they said.
