Today’s breakthrough in medical science is unparalleled. Sheep have been cloned, cures have been innovated, and medicines are constantly improving and being designed to help with humanity’s ailments and diseases.
A Chinese man known only as Xiaolian was in a terrible car accident that damaged his nose severely. After that an infection furthered his nose’s trauma. Doctors decided that the only way to reconstruct his nose was to grow another one. The 22 year old will now be able to do all the same things he used to do before, except with his new nose that was created using skin from the top of his head. The replacement nose was made using tissue expanders that were placed under the skin. The skin was then cut to resemble a nose. Nostrils were defined as well as what appears to be a bridge. Though a rather unorthodox situation, the 22 year old young man will have a face that has all of the identifiable parts that are functional. Doctors expect to implant the nose soon, according to ABC News.
Dr. Patrick Byrne, the director of Facial, Plastic and Reconstruction Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center commented on the situation. He mentions that the skin on the nose is closest to the skin on the forehead. Byrne says, “my guess would be that they felt that the tissue in the nose was so damaged that they had to use the forehead skin on the interior part of the nose. It’ll be a real nose and have a breathing passage way.”
Cartilage from Xiaolian’s rib will be used to define the “nose bone” and give his new nose structure. Dr. Byrne does mention that since the smell receptors are high in the nose that the young patient should still be able to smell. So long as infection is avoided, doctors are very confident that the patient will be able to go back to life as usual, as his new nose should work just about as good as the old one.