For 3 years he could only feed himself by drinking liquids. Eating, as well as speaking, was impossible because his mouth opened an inch at most. Blame the blows received, a neglected jaw fracture that knocked out the key joint of the face. It is the story of a 16-year-old boy of Senegalese origins, the victim of a very violent beating in Libya and a guest in a reception facility in L’Aquila. A drama with a happy ending, thanks to a record surgery performed at the L’Aquila hospital by the maxillofacial surgery team directed by Filippo Giovannetti. Surgeons designed, built and implanted a custom-made titanium prosthesis on the young man. “An extraordinary operation since the first of its kind in Abruzzo, and more generally one of the first in Italy, on a subject in the pediatric age”, explained by the ASL Avezzano, Sulmona, L’Aquila.
Following the violence reported by the boy, the untreated fracture caused the temporomandibular joint to fuse over time, so as to cause almost complete occlusion of the mouth. “After the first specialist visits to the L’Aquila hospital, a phase of meticulous study began for the creation of titanium prostheses in a computerized manner”, reports the Abruzzo ASL 1. Hence the “extremely delicate operation” carried out last week and which lasted 10 hours, reads a note. “A ‘custom made’ temporomandibular joint prosthesis was implanted bilaterally, an absolutely innovative custom-built solution. Thanks to this implant, the patient’s mouth now opens up to 4 centimetres”.
“In a few days the boy will be discharged and will have to follow a path of rehabilitation to regain full functionality”, says Giovannetti who thanks “the company management for the radical reorganization of the activities of the operating block, which today allows the success of such complexity”. The operation – specifies the ASL – was carried out in collaboration with Andrea Battisti and Paolo Priore, surgeons of the team of Valentino Valentini, full professor of maxillofacial surgery at the La Sapienza University of Rome. The anesthesiological team directed by Franco Marinangeli and coordinated by Francesco Vacca, and the surgical team with Ettore Lupi, Antonio Oliva and Flavia Maesa also contributed to the result.
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