Cocorico: surgeons from the Toulouse University Hospital have succeeded in an unprecedented nasal reconstruction on an elderly patient suffering from skin cancer. The 75-year-old had several malignant tumors on his face – on his nose and forehead. On his nose in particular, five basal cell carcinomas (cancerous, therefore) had to be removed.
The reference procedure would have consisted of removing malignant tumors from the nose and then removing skin from the forehead in order to reconstruct a functional (understand: with which the patient can breathe) and aesthetic (understand: relatively close to the nose) nose. natural nose).
An unprecedented nasal reconstruction … but effective!
Except that the patient in question (decidedly unlucky) “also carried tumors on his forehead. So we could not repair his nose with damaged skin. We had to find something else. We immersed ourselves in anatomical studies” explains Dr Guillaume de Bonnecaze, ENT surgeon at Toulouse University Hospital. In collaboration with Pr Benoît Chaput, plastic surgeon, specialist in arterioles, the specialist then proposes a new surgical technique: reconstruct the patient’s nose with the skin … of his chin.
The reconstruction operation took place 1 month after the cancerous tumors were removed. A year later, the two surgeons take stock in the specialized journal Head and Neck : “the patient can breathe normally, his nose is reconstructed, without a scar (…) The magic of the human body has done its work”.
According to the Ministry of Health, each year, 80,000 skin cancers are diagnosed in France: 70% of them belong to the family of “basal cell carcinomas”.
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