Doctors put smile back on the face of Iraqi girl with rare deformity
NEW DELHI: A four-year-old girl from Iraq, born with her face split down the middle, got her smile and life back in a complex 12-hour reconstructive surgery at Max Superspeciality Hospital, Saket.
Zainab Hayder Mohammed was born with a rare facial split that ran down her nose and made her right eyeball and brain tissue pop out of her skull. The condition, called ‘Bifid craniofacial dysrhaphia’, caused severe disfigurement and made her blind in the right eye.
“Zainab’s condition is extremely rare and the surgery involved splitting the face into two halves, taking out the excess bone separating the eyes and then rejoining both halves,” said Dr Sunil Choudhary, director and chief of plastic surgery, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, who led the surgery.
“It was a complex and potentially life-threatening surgery as the skull, eye sockets, nose jaw and tongue were all reconstructed,” he said.
The human face takes shape between six and eight weeks of gestation, when the two halves of the face combine. Clefts happen when this process gets arrested for some reason, which may include viral infections, folic acid deficiency, drugs such as steroids and anti- convulsants, and external factors such as environmental toxins.
“The surgery was essential because apart from the disfigurement, a part of her brain was exposed that made it vulnerable to injury. This meant someone poking her forehead could damage her brain,” Dr Choudhary said.
“The biggest challenge was operating in sections of her face where surgeons had to go blind, like while chiseling the orbit (eye socket) while making sure we didn’t touch the optic nerve. I used my fingers to feel and use the 3 mm chisel to ensure there was no damage to the delicate optic nerve,” said Dr Choudhary.
Because of her disfigurement, Zainab spent almost all her life indoors, where she drew pictures and watched Shahid Kapoor films.
“She talked and ate normally, but didn’t go out to play since the children teased her,” said her father Hayder Mohammed, who works as a schoolteacher in Muthanna, Iraq.
Zainab is the second of four children, the other three are boys.
“I’m happy the surgery was done before she starts school, which begins at age 6 in Iraq. She is very bright,” said her father, who is in Delhi for his daughter’s surgery.
He spent $20,000 for the surgery and travel to India.
“We got one surgery done in Iraq, but then people said India was best bet for surgery and people raised money to fund her treatment. Now all of Iraq is waiting for us to return home from India,” said Hayder Mohammed, the happy father.
“The grafts will all merge and her face will grow into shape as she grows older. She will need another reconstruction for her eye – she will eventually get a glass eye — which we plan to do before she starts school,” said Dr Choudhary. “It’s a one in a million condition, and her disfigurement was very severe, but she will just have minor scars to show for it in a few years.”
