Summary:

For nearly 40 years, hundreds of our patients have benefited from facial reconstruction. The use of retention methods through bone anchoring has fostered a close collaboration between anaplastologists and surgical teams.

We have kept pace with technical, medical, and technological advancements, and thanks to feedback from our patients, we have made numerous improvements to prosthetic reconstructions since our first cases.

It was especially necessary for tumor cases. Patients were usually left with a missing part in their face until the healing allowed a possible reconstruction. The delays could go up to a number of weeks, but sometimes a temporary prosthesis was made in the meantime.

Thus we developed the following protocol: the tumor resection and the insertion of bone-anchored implants are performed in the same surgical session, as well as the placement of a perioperative prosthesis. This allows for immediate reconstruction up until the delivery of the definitive bone-anchored prosthesis several weeks later.

So far, we have treated 42 cases since 2022: 18 nasal cases, 10 orbital cases, 7 combined facial cases, and 7 auricular cases (among them 3 bilateral cases).

The anaplastologist will discuss the protocol, the surgical collaboration, the artistic and technical challenges for the different categories of facial reconstructions.

This technique has tremendously improved the quality of life for the patient who wakes up from traumatic surgery with an immediate temporary reconstruction, the reflection of his own face, accepting his new self image more quickly, and living a better social life. He also has the option of wearing glasses immediately after the operation which allows him to avoid personal and social isolation.