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3D-Printing Helped Restore A Teenager's Burnt Nose

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Jan 04, 2016 11:21 AM EST

When 14-year-old Dallan Jennet fell on a power line, his face got severely burnt.

This teenager from the Marshall Islands got his nose back, thanks to a 3-D printed nose. He is the first person in the United States to have got it restored, thanks to health officials at Mount Sinai Hospital.

He finished the last of six surgeries in order to finalise the surgery. Last year, the health officials had placed expanders under his "remaining nose skin" to create some space under the skin, so that a new nose could be "implanted."

"The procedure is akin to a 'nose transplant' in that we were able to replace the nose with a functional implant," Dr. Tal Dagan, an associate adjunct surgeon at Mount Sinai who led the surgery, said in a news release. "This procedure may be a breakthrough in facial reconstruction because the patient will never have to deal with the standard issues of transplantation, such as tissue rejection or a lifetime of immunosuppressive therapies."

The 3D-printed nose had been based on family models. The team ensured that they could customize a few facial features just like his. It took a surgery 16 hours to harvest capacious amounts of tissue and blood vessels from his thigh, according to UPI.

Hence, doctors removed large amounts of scar tissue from his face and pushed it into his nose in order to reconstruct the skin over the implant.

Once the surgery, followed by four more operations as well as follow-up exams, was completed, he could get back his senses of smelling and tasting.

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