Surgery allows young girl to open her mouth

Press, 7 May 1984, Page 26

Surgery allows young girl to open her mouth

NZPA-AP Massachusetts A tiny Ecuadorean orphan whose jaw had been fused to her skull since birth could open her mouth yesterday after a seven-hour operation in which two of her ribs were crafted into joints. Dr Martin Dunn, head of the team that performed the surgery on Alexandra Balcazar, said that the surgery went perfectly. Alexandra, who weighed only 12.7 kg when she was brought to the United States last month, was operated on by a team of volunteers yesterday at Brockton’s Cardinal Cushing General Hospital. Doctors discovered during the surgery that she may be as much as six years old. “For the first time in her young life she will be able to speak, eat, and laugh like a normal child,” a doctor said. The girl was thought to be six months old when she was abandoned on the steps

of a hospital in Quito, Ecuador. She had been able to eat only through a tiny hole in her mouth, putting mashed food between her teeth or by through tubes directly to her stomach. Dr Dunn said that there were serveral surprises for surgeons and nurses during the surgery, including an indication that Alexandra was two years older than was assumed because of her size. “The teeth were those we normally would expect to find in a girl aged six,” he said. The complicated surgery was made possible by a group of volunteer doctors and nurses calleed Por Cristo — Spanish for For Christ. Members of the group give their time and skills to help Ecuador’s cast-offs, the poor and sick who cannot be healed in the country’s hospitals. Once a year they bring someone like Alexandra to the United States for treatment.