Health and Medicine
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Images have recently resurfaced online that show the incredible reconstruction of a woman’s face, and the Internet is freaking out.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Posted on the medical website Figure 1, a physician by the username "sidsid" impressed users by doing the seemingly impossible: He patched together a patient’s face with a mixture of metal wires, plates, and screws in a surgery that lasted eight hours.
The woman, 25, in question was allegedly involved in a serious motor collision in which she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. She entered the emergency room with "traumatic brain injury with intracranial hemorrhage, a traumatic eye injury requiring enucleation, and extensive facial fractures," reports the Metro.
The ophthalmologist and his team worked tirelessly to perform a procedure to not only save the woman’s life, but also reconstruct her bone structure.
The surgeon commented in an update afterwards, saying the patient still has "traumatic brain injury. Tracheostomy issues. C. Diff infection. Vertebral artery dissection management. Possible traumatic optic neuropathy of remaining eye," and that her jawbones were required to be wired shut for an extended period post-op.
He later said: "Just saw the patient in clinic today. She is very depressed but remarkable how she is recovering. Completely alert and oriented and walking."
Understandably, Figure 1 users took to the comments to express a mixture of awe, congratulations, and humpty-dumpty jokes. "You and your team are definitely wiser and more gifted than all of the King's men because you have surely put all of the pieces together again. Just phenomenal."
Many others were simply astounded at the skill and mastery of the surgeons. One user said: "The surgeons who performed this are an absolute team of da Vinci's’ (@PoiBaloo)."
@Shelly2919 posted: "Literally spectacular. Medicine at its finest right there!"
The images were posted to the site around two years ago, but have resurfaced across the Internet recently. The patient has now recovered, and the surgeon now periodically posts similar (albeit slightly less dramatic) work they are currently doing.
Hats off to you, sidsid – truly astonishing work.
