Meet the doctor who reconstructed a patient's jaw using bone from one of his legs

An Indian-origin surgeon in the UK, with the help of a 3D printer, has successfully reconstructed a 53-year-old cancer patient's jaw using bone from one of his legs.

Dr. Daya Gahir of Royal Stoke University Hospital in the West Midlands region of England specialises in facial, head, and neck surgery, and conducts as many as 40 reconstructions a year. Last year, his hospital acquired the software required to make full use of the 150,000-pound ($186,871) 3D printer, to make his task even more efficient, including designing and manufacturing the surgical tools and performing the surgery, reports PTI.

Gahir told the Stoke Sentinel newspaper,

We do at least 40 major head and neck reconstructions per year. Around 10 to 15 cases will be done in this way using the printer. Some of the leg bone was taken and then reshaped, as you have to replace bone with bone. We took away some of the skin from the leg as well and replanted it back into the neck.

Explaining the delicate 12-hour surgery conducted on his patient Stephen Waterhouse recently, Gahir said that Waterhouse's jawbone had disintegrated after he underwent radiotherapy treatment for his throat cancer a few years ago.

He was left with a crumbling jawbone, which Gahir was able to reconstruct using bone from his leg. He said,

If you leave seven centimetres of the leg bone on either side, you can take the rest, as it carries only about 20 percent of the body weight at most.

The Royal Stoke University Hospital is the only hospital in the UK to offer such a facility, having acquired the expensive printer around two years ago. Gahir said,

If patients could not have it done here, they would have to be sent to Germany for it. Not only is that expensive, but it is a waste of time too. Cancers do not wait, they keep growing. It is better for the patient too as they do not worry as much.

After the surgery, patients have to spend five days in a high dependency unit, and up to another 14 days on a ward where they are fed food through their nose. Waterhouse is now fully recovered, and is all praise for the "superb" medical care he received.

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