A worldwide extraordinary, innovative surgery has been performed at the Clinical Center Department of Otorhinolaryngology.
A craniofacial tumour was removed from a middle-aged man from Baranya, half of whose face had to be removed - writes pecsma.hu with reference to szabadpecs.hu. The unique intervention was performed by a medical team, led by dr. László Lujber associate professor.
According to Dr. László Lujber, such a tumour can destroy bones and soft tissues and can even spread to the eyes, mouth, or the brain. Moreover, not only the tumour needs to be removed during surgery but also the areas around it. With today’s technology, doctors can now achieve to replace the part holding the eye, or even the meninges with various materials, or the palate with a special prosthesis. For the current procedure, it was pre-marked which bones and which part of the skull must be removed based on the CT scan and then the patient's entire skull and craniofacial parts were printed with a 3D printer.
During the seven-hour surgery, not only the tumour was removed but practically half of the patient’s face, part of the nose, teeth, and bones holding the eye. The skin on his face was folded on his head and then pulled back. The medical team then produced the bone substitutes in light of the 3D skull image, the precisely localized tumour and the removed parts so that the custom prosthesis could be implanted after the surgery.