PLASTIC. SURGERY.

Shannon News, 2 May 1924, Page 4

PLASTIC. SURGERY.

NEW NECK FOR A NURSE. MANY CIVILIANS TREATED. Nearly all facial deformities which cause mental suffering and unfit people for iwark," cant noAv be remedied by plastic surgery, which means restoration of a lost or injured part by transference > of healthy skin and cartilage from another part of the body. Hitherto this treatment has been available only for soldiers wounded in the war and rich civilians, but at St. Andrew’s Hospital, Dollis Hill, London, there has ,now been provided a small building where patients of the professional and middle classes can .have deformities corrected. The matron, Sister M. Ignatius, tells of many people, so disfigured that they could not Avorlc or be seen out Of dooia AvhO' were completely cured. The following are among the cases: A woman, Avho fell on a fire and had her jaw and half her face burned fway, was sent out with a new jaw, neAV! eyebrows, and practically a new face. , A-girl had her eye, her nose, and other parts of her face blown away by a gun accident. Her face was completely restored. Another girl, Avithout a nose, was supplied Avith one from her own skin and cartilage. \ bab-.-, v. >th a Avithered ear, has, by skin-grafting, been supplied with a perfect ear. _ . A i nurse was so badly burned that her jaw was drawn down, by contraction) of the skin, to her chest. Major Gillies, the plastic surgeon, grafted skinifrom her abdomen, orn her arm: when the skin had taken root on the arm jhe severed it from the, abdomen raised the arm to the neck, and grafted the skin there. The nurse is back at These operations are extremely delicate and often prolonged. Three of four hours is not,unusual, the matron explains,' and sometimes an operation which begins at'i p.m. does not finish until, S o’clock at night. An international clinic of plastic surgery is to be established at St. Andrew’s Hospital, to which doctois from America and France.have decided to come. _____