meisterwaffles t1_ix1bgnu wrote
ENT here. They mention it towards the end of the article, but they end up transplanting the nose in what’s called a “free flap surgery”. It’s a common procedure in head and neck surgery for reconstruction after cancer removal. It involves taking skin, soft tissue, bone, muscle (with its associated arteries and veins) from places like your forearm, thigh, leg, scapula, etc. and transplanting them to other places where you hook up donor and recipient veins and arteries using microsurgery. I work on ~4-5 of these cases a week where we have patients with tongue, throat, etc. cancer where we replace missing tissue after cancer removal with donor tissue from elsewhere in the body.
Haterbait_band t1_ix27f62 wrote
Hooking up veins and arteries sounds tricky, but what about nerves? I’d imagine the transplanted skin wouldn’t have much feeling without them. How would I know my nose it itchy?
meisterwaffles t1_ix2mjap wrote
Most of these surgeries use insensate flaps so usually don’t connect nerves, but there are ones that do connect the nerves. Nerve regeneration is just much more finicky than arteries and veins so it’s usually not worth it.
Lord_Silverkey t1_ix2r03q wrote
My cousin has been going through this recently. He had to have most of his cheek removed from cancer in his mouth. He had "luckily" accidentally injured his cheek minorly at work, which then wouldn't heal, which caused the doctors to find the cancer.
My understanding is that they've replaced the cheek with a deep piece of tissue from his thigh, and then replaced the deep tissue on his thigh with thin tissue from his forearm.
He started chemo this past Friday. I believe it's to try to ensure that if any cancer spread further it'll be more effectively killed off and won't return as easily. He'll be getting doses 5 days a week until the new year.
It's pretty rough to see him go through it.
mfh1234 t1_ix2v216 wrote
It’s going to be tough for him but surprisingly it seems to pass quickly
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