Born with rare deformity, infant gets new life, courtesy Command Hosp

LUCKNOW: She was six-day-old, grossly underweight and gasping for breath due to rare jaw deformity - Pierre Robin Sequence (PRS) - when the daughter of a jawan, posted in Jhansi, was referred to Command Hospital, Lucknow.
The doctor at the local government hospital had already informed the parents that the infant won't survive more than a few days.

"When the infant arrived at our facility, she was gasping for breath even though she was being supplied oxygen through a breathing tube. Born with PRS, an extremely rare birth defect with an underdeveloped jaw, backward displacement of the tongue and upper airway obstruction, the infant was saved after two surgeries," said Brigadier Mukti Kanta Rath, consultant maxillofacial surgeon, who led the team of specialists, including Colonel Ashutosh Kumar, neonatologist, Colonel Badal Parikh, anesthesiologists and Lt Col Vishal Kulkarni, maxillofacial surgeon.
"Before the main surgery we performed the adhesion surgery of lip-tongue as an interim measure. The tongue of the infant was near her throat. After five weeks, when the infant was fit for placement of a distractor (instruments used to move the lower jaw ahead), the anaesthesiologist used the state of the art video guided intubation to resort it. The baby's small lower jaw was lengthened by over 10 mm by using the latest surgical technique called neonatal distraction histiogenesis (NDH)," said surgeon Rath, who hails from Odisha.
The NDH technique, developed by Russian military surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov to lengthen amputated limbs of Russian soldiers, has been successfully adapted by maxillofacial surgeons to lengthen the human jaws.
For more than two months, nursing staff including Lt Col Rajni Mole, Major Khilota Devi and Captain Laxmi took care of the infant girl round the clock.
PRS affects one in 60,000 infants. If not treated promptly, such infants rarely make it to their first birthday.