Surgeons in France have grown a woman a new nose on her arm - before successfully grafting it to her face.
The patient in Toulouse lost a large part of her nose after being treated for nasal cavity cancer in 2013, using radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
She spent years living without the organ, enduring a failed attempt to reconstruct the organ using skin flap grafting, and experiencing difficulty wearing facial prosthetics.
But a ground-breaking procedure has now seen a new nose grown on her forearm using cutting-edge technology.
A custom-made biomaterial - used in the place of cartilage - was first 3D printed into a shape based on images of her nose from before her cancer treatment.
The structure was then implanted in the patient’s forearm, where skin taken from her temple was grown over it.
In September, after two months in her arm, the nose could be transplanted onto the woman’s face.
Using micosurgery, surgeons connected blood vessels in the arm skin to blood vessels in the woman’s face.
“After 10 days of hospitalisation and three weeks of antibiotics, the patient is doing very well,” medics said.
The tailor-made intervention was carried out by the ear, nose and throat and cervico-facial surgery teams from the Toulouse University Hospital, and the Claudius Regaud Institute, and took place at the Toulouse-Oncopole University Cancer Institute.
The hospital said: “This type of reconstruction had never before been performed on such a fragile and poorly vascularised area and was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the medical teams with the company Cerhum, a Belgian manufacturer of medical devices specializing in bone reconstruction.
“This new technique also makes it possible to overcome certain limitations presented by other techniques.”
