Luna Fenner, who is now only six months old, was born with a huge black birthmark on her face - it covers the eye, nose, cheeks and most of the baby's forehead. In the United States, the Fenner family was faced with the fact that others were regularly afraid of such an unusual appearance of the moon, and the parents themselves were afraid that at an older age the girl would encounter bullying.
The girl’s mother, 35-year-old Carol Fenner, turned to American doctors for help, but they did not give guarantees of a successful outcome of treatment. In addition, it cost a lot of money - in US clinics they offered to do about 80 operations with a total cost of up to half a million dollars over five years.
Russian oncologist surgeon Pavel Popov from Krasnodar volunteered to help the girl. He proposed a gentle method of treatment, which will take from one year to one and a half years. On September 26, Carol and Luna Fenner flew from Miami to Krasnodar, and on September 30 the first consultation took place.
“How did you hear about Luna Fenner?” How did you get in touch with her mom?
- I met Luna Fenner quite by accident - I caught sight of her photo in the news feed. Looking at the photo, I immediately realized that it was a giant melanocytic nevus. Localization, of course, is very complicated. From the point of view of classical surgery, it is almost impossible to remove without creating serious functional problems over the centuries, and in general the cosmetic result will be very modest after such a large-scale transplantation of skin grafts.
Skin flaps of this area themselves have nowhere to take from a small child, so it will take several years, during which silicone cylinders, embedded under the skin, will stretch the skin of the child. That is, the girl will be forced to live with terrible banks before the skin is stretched so that there will be an excess of it that can be used for transplants.
“Did the parents of the moon turn to American doctors?”
- The mother of the moon from the very birth of the girl was preoccupied with the question of how to save her from this terrible disease - she turned to a large number of specialists. The girl was examined at various medical centers in America. A bunch of research materials were collected on CDs, but no one suggested a solution to the problem. And what didn’t suit mom most was the start of treatment, which suggested that the girl should grow up. Further, the duration of the treatment itself, which should have been measured for five years, and maybe more. It is also clear why it was impossible to postpone treatment and stretch it.
The most important thing is that the specialists who were contacted by the mother of the moon, and she turned to the best plastic surgeons, did not show her any convincing photos and videos of previously treated patients that could instill confidence in her that this would all end happily.
“Why did you decide to start the operation right now?”
- You perfectly understand that the adoption of such unusual features of appearance by the world is not the most favorable, that is, the girl’s psyche will be destroyed by her living environment - kindergarten, school, etc. These are social aspects, but there are also purely medical ones.
A giant melanocytic nevus, such as that of the moon, is almost an obligate precursor to melanoma. That is, sooner or later, the nevus will become malignant, and the resulting melanoma will kill the girl.
Unfortunately, almost half of patients with melanoma still seek medical help when it is no longer possible to provide it in a radical way. Thus, you need not wait for the weather near the sea, but do the removal of the nevus right now, while the girl is small, until she understands the severity of her condition.
In addition, children under the age of three amnesize events, therefore, if she recovers before this moment, there will be no sad episodes in her life.
- The birthmark of the moon - the biggest one with which you had to work in your practice?
- During my practice, I had to work with nevuses with an area much larger than the area of the Moon, and the localization of the nevi that I removed was similar to the location of the Moon, but the most important thing is not that.
I have been doing photodynamic therapy for skin melanoma for a very long time. This is much more complicated than the treatment of nevuses, because melanoma is a malignant tumor that actively metastases. The experience of monitoring my treated patients with melanoma is ten years or more. For oncology today it is almost a miracle.
“Is the moon your youngest patient?”
- No, not the youngest. With congenital defects of the face, patients often come to us immediately after birth, because neoplasms are dangerous to the life of a child. For example, severe epidermodysplasia - the timing of its possible transformation into squamous cell carcinoma is actually measured in months, that is, from the moment of birth, there is very little time to make a decision, and this must be done before the process of malignancy occurs. Therefore, we take the smallest, almost only born patients.