Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Nine-year old undergoes `facial bipartition'

R. Sujatha

Doctors at SRMC perform difficult surgery to set right deformed skull

CHENNAI: Specialists at the Sri Ramachandra Hospital in Porur have successfully performed a difficult surgery to set right a deformed face, cutting open the skull and rejoining it after removing excess tissue.

Pushparaj (9), son of a daily wager in Ooty, came to the hospital with a rare facial anomaly: his skull was deformed and his eyes were 6 cm apart instead of the normal 3 cm.

Such deformities could be caused during birth, or due to trauma or cancer.

Pushparaj had to wait for two years until his doctor Jyotsna Murthy could find someone to fund his surgery. On Friday, he underwent `facial bipartition,' a complex craniofacial procedure. A fortnight later, Pushparaj will undergo a small procedure to improve the shape of his nose.

The Canadian NGO, Transforming Faces Worldwide, funded the surgery. In a procedure that lasted nearly nine hours, doctors cut open Pushparaj's skull base into half. "The cuts were made in the bones so that the face was not damaged. The extra tissue was removed and the eyes were brought together."

Dr. Jyotsna was assisted by a team of specialists: K. Ganesh, neurosurgeon; Aruna Parmeswari, anaesthetist; and Altaf Hussain and R. Venkatesh, plastic surgeons. Recently another five-year-old girl, Jeevitha, underwent a surgery to correct her deformed skull. The head was out of shape since birth and it was corrected to normal proportions.

Dr. Jyotsna, who is director of the Cleft and Craniofacial Centre at the hospital, specialises in setting right complex deformities of the skull.

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