A girl with a rare birth condition got a new face

Two-year-old Violet Pietrok was born with an extremely rare condition, called Tessier facial cleft, leaving the bones in her face so spread apart that her nose lacked cartilage and her eyes didn’t have normal vision.

Because the defect is so rare, not many doctors have experience with repairing it, but Dr. John Meara, a plastic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, seemed to offer the Pietroks some hope: He had performed four operations on children with similar defects in the past several years, Mediacal Daily reports, citing The New York Times. Meara and his team used 3D printing to recreate a mold of Violet’s skull, then practiced operating on it, chiseled out areas that had problems and brought the two parts of her skull closer together to fill the gap between her eyes.

 “Normally you can’t see certain aspects of the skeleton with skin covering and muscle covering the area,” Meara said. “3D printing allows you to see areas and actually dissimilate surgery in ways that’s never been possible before.”

The operation has lasted for more than 10 hours, and about 6 weeks were required for the girl's recovery.

Thus, doctors  cut into Violet’s facial bone, and using the practice 3D-printed mold as a guide, completed the complicated procedure that involved moving her eyes together and pressing her bones into a more normal position.

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