Surgeons from Krasnodar reconstructed the face of a resident of Primorsky Territory who survived a bear attack. This is discussed at the Alexey Dykerb Center for Micro and Plastic Surgery.
A man encounters a predator while hunting. He noticed that the bear was approaching him and tried to resist, as he had no way to escape. As a result, the animal caused severe injuries to the hunter's face. Primorye was urgently sent to Vladivostok, and he lay in a coma for 3 months, after which he flew to Krasnodar to undergo rehabilitation.
"The patient spent 3 months in the intensive care unit, fighting for his life. The man was missing the fragments of the facial skeleton, the external nose and most of the upper jaw, which led to a violation of the impermeability of the oral cavity. The patient could not eat - there was a gastrostomy tube," said the surgeons.
The man himself admitted that when he came to his senses, he was first of all glad to be alive. At that moment, he decided to follow the path of "building a new personality" and realized that he could move on with his life.
To restore the face required a whole series of surgeries, and in total it took a year. Specialists performed a microsurgical reconstruction, restored the nose and part of the upper jaw with a fibular implant, and also restored the tightness of the oral cavity, thanks to which the man was able to eat independently again.
"This is not a question of aesthetic rehabilitation, not a question of how to make the patient more attractive in society. It's a question of quality of life, it's a question of whether he'll be able to eat normally, go to the store and choose the foods he wants to eat, it's a question of whether he'll be able to breathe freely again," said the center's doctor Daria Pidartsova.
Now the man continues his active life and plans to continue doing what he loves - hunting. He recalls what happened to him ironically, noting that he even managed to slap the bear in the face.
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