Toulouse University Hospital in France, has performed the fist ever nose transplant on a patient, with the aid of a 3D printer, AFP reports.
According to the report, the Toulouse University Hospital first implanted the biomaterial on the forearm of the patient for better revascularization, a move that has been described as an unprecedented intervention.
Toulouse University Hospital completely reconstructed the nose of the patient from a synthetic graft previously implanted in the patient forearm, the Toulouse Cancer University Institute announced in a press release on Monday November 7.
In 2013, the patient was treated for nasal cavity cancer . A treatment which had made him lose “a large part of his nose as well as the front part of his palate”, indicated the hospital. After four years without a nose, the ENT and cervico-facial surgery teams at the Toulouse University Hospital offered him “a bespoke nasal reconstruction using biomaterial” using a 3D printer.
The CHU specified that “this type of reconstruction had never before been performed on such a fragile and poorly vascularized area”.
“The patient is doing very well”
For the transplant to be a success, it was then necessary to put the biomaterial “in nurse” at the level of the forearm of the patient for two months in order to better irrigate the new nose thanks to the blood vessels.
Transplantation in the nasal region was then able to take place in September 2022 using microsurgery to connect the blood vessels. “After ten days of hospitalization and three weeks of antibiotics, the patient is doing very well,” concluded the Toulouse hospital center, which will continue to observe its evolution.