Doctors remove girl’s skull, piece it back together like a jigsaw puzzle

July 29, 2014  22:38

A 4-year-old girl is in good health after surgeons took apart her skull and pieced it back together like a jigsaw puzzle, FoxNews reported. 

Sophie Campbell was born with a condition called craniosynostosis that caused her skull to fuse together prematurely, leaving no room for her brain to grow.

When Sophie was just a year old, doctors told her mother, Fiona Campbell, 31, that without the operation, her daughter would suffer permanent brain damage.

“We didn’t know what the outcome would be,” Fiona told the Daily Record. “They had to pull down the front of her face, break the plates, take out her eyebrow bone, reshape it and put it back together.”

During the 8-hour procedure, surgeons at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital cut Sophie’s skull from ear to ear and carefully removed it before piecing it back together.

The surgery was a success, but Sophie suffered a minor setback in January when doctors found she had a tethered spinal cord requiring another operation to preserve the use of her legs.

“Since then Sophie has never looked back,” said Fiona. “The only downside is she has developed a phobia of hospitals and is having therapy to overcome this.”

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