Fixing Faces: Healthy Life Report

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By Ashley Hinson

Story Created: Feb 11, 2010 at 12:23 PM CST

Story Updated: Feb 11, 2010 at 12:23 PM CST

BACKGROUND: Reconstructive surgery of the face is different from cosmetic surgery since reconstructive surgery is performed to correct trauma, injury or abnormalities. Such procedures are sometimes performed to improve function, and other times to restore a normal appearance. Surgery to reconstruct the face can involve a wide range of numbers and combinations of plates, surgical screws, implants and grafts of bone, nerves, muscles and skin. One of the more complicated types of surgery, the first part of facial reconstruction can take one to two months. The cosmetic part of reconstruction often takes place a year later.

WHAT MAKES FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION SO COMPLICATED? Doctors say the challenge in facial reconstruction lies in the fact that the face is made of up many different structures, including bones, muscles and nerves that control very fine movements. Movements controlled by this arrangement of structures include swallowing, speaking, blinking and facial expressions. Successful facial reconstruction requires plastic surgeons to suture blood vessels that are only one to two millimeters wide. Thankfully, advancements in technology allow surgeons to rebuild tissues at such a microscopic level, as well as harvest tissues from other areas of the body to be incorporated into the face.

REBUILDING ERIN'S FACE: Erin McCormick was boating with friends when the unthinkable happened. Run over by a boat, a propeller shredded her body and her face. "They told me when I came in, they thought I only had a 1 percent chance of survival," McCormick told Ivanhoe. After she survived the initial life-threatening injuries, surgeons set out to rebuild her face. "Ballpark, she had approximately 10 fractures in her jaw alone," Pablo Prichard, M.D., medical director of plastic surgery at John C. Lincoln North Mountain Hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., told Ivanhoe. "On top of that, she had fractures of her cheek, eyeball socket, and her, what we call, the upper jaw, or the maxilla."

Dr. Prichard and his team rebuilt Erin's face by putting together tiny bone fragments and pieces of muscle, as well as reconnecting nerves that were severed. "Not only [did] we put the nerves back together, but we [used] a special nerve-coating device to go around the nerves called Neuragen that helps those nerves re-grow and go back into one solid nerve," Dr. Prichard explained. Neuragen, a collagen tube, protects the healing nerves from being constricted by scarring.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Susan Fuchs
Public Relations
John C. Lincoln Hospitals
(623) 434-6266