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Putting an End to a Girl Sufferance from a Breathing Tube Lasted for 3 Years

3/18/2018 12:00 AM

A surgical medical team at King Fahad Medical City succeeded to put an end to the suffering of a three-year-old girl by removing a breathing tube from her trachea, which has been in place since her birth. Now, she is able to breathe and utter normally.

The girl was born with an atrophy and a severe retreat in the lower jaw, which caused blockage in her respiratory tract due to retraction of the lower jaw and tongue, prompting doctors to make a hole in the trachea following her birth.

The medical team led by Dr. Abdulsalam AlJabab, Consultant of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Director of Dental Department and Dr. Falah AlShahrani, Chief of Resident Physicians of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Program, and Dr. Ameen Binnasser, Consultant of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, have performed a surgery to lengthen the lower jaw in its congenital form, which in turn led to natural movement of the jaw and the tongue and open the respiratory pathway, leading eventually to remove the breathing tube from trachea so that the girl can breathe normally and she started making sounds for the first time since her birth.

The parents of the child, before they arrived to King Fahad Medical City, were suffering a lot from surgeries to which their daughter underwent  in order to adjust the jaw, expand the respiratory pathway and remove the breathing tube. However, all these surgeries did not success, which led them to communicate with King Fahad Medical City and request for specialized healthcare service.

This surgery is considered  rare in this sub-specialty particularly in the age of children, due to the difficulty of  lower jaw-lengthening surgery, which requires the presence of cadres with  high level of efficiency and surgical proficiency.