A mother who lost her nose eight years ago in a battle with cancer finally got a new one, after it grew on her arm.
The French patient, known only as Carine, had part of her real nose cut off to treat sinus cancer in 2013.
While the surgery saved her life, the lasting damage left her too scared to leave the house and took away her sense of smell.
Before he received cancer treatment, doctors made a custom nose out of 3D-printed biomaterial and kept it on ice until the technology caught up.
This year, the structure was implanted under the skin of his forearm, where cells and blood vessels grew into the device for two months.
Two months later, the ‘nose’ was implanted in his face, with the blood vessels inside and then joined to those in his temples.
The patient is delighted with the new nose and says that it is helping her to breathe easier and to smell her garden. Another operation will be necessary to allow sensitivity in the organ.
It comes after it was revealed in May that a British man had a new penis transplanted into his genital region, after it grew back on his forearm.
A 50-year-old mother from Toulouse, France, has grown a new nose after losing her old one due to nasal cancer. Pictured above is the 3D printed image of her original nose. This was made from biomaterial and implanted under her arm so cells and blood vessels could grow into it.
Shown above two months later, after it was filled with tissue. In a second operation, this nose was moved from his arm to where her nose was. The patient says that she is helping her breathe better and smell her garden again
The personalized intervention was carried out by the otolaryngology and cervico-facial surgery teams of the Toulouse University Hospital and the Claudius Regaud Institute, and took place at the Toulouse-Oncopole University Cancer Institute.
Carine said 20 minutes that he can now breathe ‘a little better’ with the new nose.
And he added: ‘I also find the smells of my garden, I can go out, I come back to life.
‘It’s miraculous, this biomaterial was my last resort and I congratulate the research and work of the doctors who helped me endure.
“I stayed locked up in my house for the last eight years. When you’re sick, you isolate yourself and the face is the first thing you see.
The patient was diagnosed with nasal cancer in 2013 and received chemotherapy and radiation therapy to treat it.
This removed the cancer, but also robbed the patient of most of her nose.
Doctors initially tried to give him skin grafts to replace the lost tissue, but these disappeared.
She was also offered prostheses, but the patient struggled to keep them in place.
It was at this point that surgeons Dr. Agnes Dupret-Bories and Dr. Benjamin Valerie suggested that they try to grow the nose back.
They implanted the device in his forearm because here the skin is much thinner, similar to that of the face.
The patient had to visit the hospital repeatedly while the skin was growing to make sure it was working well and there was no damage.
After two months, they decided that he had grown enough to move it up to his nose.
Once in place, the scientists used a microscope to attach the device’s blood vessels to those in the face.
To replace the lost skin on her forearm, they took a graft from her thighs.
The patient spent ten days in the hospital after the procedure and received antibiotics, but it was successful.
Dr. Dupret-Bories said France3 the patient was ‘very excited’ about the operation.
“It’s a custom-made biomaterial implant, which was basically a scaffold to be colonized by the patient’s body,” he said.
‘In reconstructions of such large parts of the face, there was no solution.
“With this device, we hope to be able to offer a satisfactory result in two operations.”
The patient currently has no sensation on the implant, which the doctors called an aesthetic and social reconstruction.
A third operation will be needed to restore these sensations, they suggested.