Baby Who Was Given Four Days to Live Survives After Undergoing Life-Saving Surgery | Part of Her Skull Was Missing

A baby girl who was born without a portion of her skull was given four days to live because of her condition. However, she is now recovering after undergoing life-saving surgery using 3D printing technology.

A congenital abnormality in the young child from Rzeszow, Poland, prevented almost a fifth of her skull from developing normally at the rear of her head. The girl was born with an underdeveloped occipital bone, which makes up the base and back of the skull.

Apparently, doctors missed the deformity while performing the scan, and only noticed it after she was born in February 2022. It exposed brain tissue, making her vulnerable to infections that almost probably would have been fatal if left untreated, per Daily Mail. 

Doctors had four days to save her life, and in a very delicate two-hour process, they were able to patch her up using skin and soft tissue from different sections of her body. It went smooth because the medics had visualized and practiced the method on an exact replica of the child's head.

A detailed scan of her head was done and sent to a 3D-printing company which then made an exact replica of her skull. As a result, the doctors were able to assess the degree of bone loss for themselves and better design the procedure. However, the surgery only provided a short-term fix for her abnormality, sealing the open area of her head to prevent infection.

The infant was born in February in Rzeszow and was moved to Krakow, Poland, 100 miles away where specialists used CT and MRI scans to create an exact virtual model of her skull. It was sent to Warsaw for 3D-printing using nylon and resins. Sygnis, a tech company printed two simultaneous skulls over the course of 26 hours, and they were sent back to the University Children's Hospital's surgeons.

The professionals practiced the complex technique on the skull to spot any potential complications that might arise during surgery. To stop brain infections, the infant was hooked up to an incubator and given her mother's milk through a tube.

Surgeons started the two-hour procedure to repair the soft tissue of the head after examining the skulls and recording the precise size and shape of the lesion. Utilizing skin, muscle, and fat from different regions of her body was part of the technique. 

"This is a very rare defect, and during my 20 years of experience, this is the first time I have had to face such a procedure," said Professor Łukasz Krakowczyk, who carried out the operation. 

"So for me, it was a very innovative procedure. About a fifth of the skull surface was missing, so it was a very large defect. The operation had to be carried out urgently because part of the brain was exposed, which threatened to infect the central nervous system. A model printed in 3D printing technology was used to plan the treatment," he continued. 

"This allowed for a precise determination of the bone loss, which significantly facilitated the planning of the operation and its scope, thus significantly shortening the time of the operation," he added. 

"The child is waiting for another operation, this time the reconstruction of the skull bone, but we know that the bones are growing and that is why we need to wait for this stage of the operation," he then mentioned, adding that "3D printing will also be indispensable at the stage of reconstruction of the skull bone defect, when it will be necessary to perfectly fit and plan bone reconstruction."

References:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11103147/3D-printing-Babys-life-saved-surgeons-use-skull-model-visualise-missing-skull.html

Representative Cover Image Source: Getty Images | ER Productions Limited