A delicate advanced surgery saved the jaw to a ten-year-old girl, attacked by a rare form of cancer malignant called “Ewing’s sarcoma”: the little patient risked losing a portion of the facial bone forever, due to the carina.
The good news of the success of the reconstructive oncological operation comes fromSantobono hospital in Napleswhere the little girl was entrusted to the care of a maxillofacial surgery medical team specially arrived from the Bari Polyclinic.
A delicate and complex intervention
To reconstruct the child’s jaw, a segment of fibula bone was taken from the child, then modeled and re-implanted. “Traditional excision would have involved removing a portion of the jawbone. The results of this procedure – reads a note from the Bari Polyclinic – in the absence of a reconstruction lead to extremely disabling and permanent problems such as facial deformities, difficulty in feeding and in the articulation of words.
The operating task force was led by doctors Clare Copelli of the Polyclinic of Bari, Marcello Zamparellidirector of the plastic surgery and burns surgery unit of the Santobono Hospital in Naples and by dr. Frank Ionadirector of the head and neck surgery unit of the IRCCS Pascale Institute in the Campania capital.
«The reconstruction surgery involved the removal of a bone segment from the fibula, its modeling to recreate the shape of the removed portion of the jaw and the subsequent transplantation in the area to be reconstructed. This last phase is carried out under a microscope and involves the execution of connections between arterial and venous vessels with a diameter of a few millimetres», explained Professor Copelli.
According to what has been disclosed, the postoperative course was uneventful. Thanks to the particular technique used, the little patient will therefore be able to obtain a complete recovery both from an aesthetic point of view (symmetry of the face) and from a functional point of view (swallowing, phonation, ability to eat).
Ewing’s sarcoma: a danger for adolescents and children
Ewing’s tumors are quite rare: according to data collected by the AIRC Foundation for Cancer Research, fewer than 100 new cases are recorded in Italy each year. They make up about 15% of all primary bone sarcomas. The peak incidence of the disease is recorded between 10-20 years of age and the tumor is slightly more common among males than females.