- Samira's new face
When Pascaline Patienda is asked about his surgical experience, he describes that he is not doing justice if he says that he has changed his life. The 23-year-old girl, who has had a tumor of her face removed - more than 20 centimeters - that prevented her from eating and drinking normally , says she has been reborn. He had a life before the ameloblastoma that erased his smile and another, now with his new face, filled with laughter and happiness.
The malformation of the young, natural Digre - a village of Burkina Faso - began at 15 years of age, but acquired such a dimension that it ceased to be an aesthetic irregularity and became an impossibility to move the mouth that made her day by day a physical and psychic ordeal for the social rejection to which he was subjected.
Without being attended by any specialist for years, Pascaline, suffered a benign but slow-growing tumor that occupied virtually the entire lower jaw and could be fatal if it continued to extend through the neck.
«We did a resection of the lesion and later we reconstructed it with a piece (flap) of the fibula bone», according to the maxillofacial surgeon, Dr. Ignacio Solís of the Vithas Valencia Hospital 9 October , who explained that the surgical technique consists of «removing a portion of fibula, almost whole, conserving its proximal and distal joint ».
Once the bone material was obtained, «it was carried to the head and adhered with an artery and with a vein, connecting them to the facial vessels. Later it was fixed with a reconstruction plate ”, clarified the specialist of the Vithas Valencia 9 October center, where the entire intervention has been paid.
The operation was successfully carried out at the end of September and, after two months, Pascaline moves her mouth naturally and has already been discharged . The desire to chew solid food has favored that the postoperative period was very fast, "despite the aggressiveness of the intervention that kept her for several days without being able to move her face and feeding on a soft diet," medical sources explained.
Facial reconstruction could not have been carried out without the presence of the Castellón NGO 'Amor en Acció' which was founded by pediatrician Ángeles Almela together with doctors Héctor Guiral, Sergi Salas, ATS Carolina Garcia, Professor Gonzalo Musitur and his Carmen woman.
"We have in Burkina Faso two local nurses who work there all year round and one of them, one day walking down the street, found Pascaline and took an interest in her face, " as explained by the NGO Amor in Acció, where they also indicated that the young woman, "who barely speaks a local dialect (I died) and does not understand French, said that the lump has been growing since she was 15 years old but that she had never been to the doctor and our nurse raised the possibility of helping her".
The bureaucracy required its time. Get the documentation regulated, passport, visa, medical proof so that it could be operated outside your country , and the search for funds to bring it to the Valencian Community.
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Surgical delays 1,583 children in the Community wait for surgery and 15,813 adults to visit with the traumatologist
Campaign Doctors and nurses are left mustache to make visible the diseases that most affect man
Equality Sanity imposes the distinction by sex in the gowns and in the attire of its workforce