PLASTIC SURGERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22619, 6 January 1937, Page 6

PLASTIC SURGERY

NEW FACE FOR YOUTH WONDERFUL ACHIEVEMENT [MOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT] SYDNEY, Dec. 31 A Sydney youth whose features were practically destroyed over two years ago when he fell face-down into a pool of nitric acid —the strongest corrosive known—has been given a new face by plastic surgery. He lias now undergone the final stage in a "reconstruction" ■which took 28 months to complete. This feat, which is described at length in the M.edical Journal of Australia, was made possible by the art of "tube-grafting" developed by surgeons since the war. '1 lie patient, a vouth of 18. met with his dreadful accident in August, l'Jii-1. As his burnt face healed, it became scarred, and contracted beyond recognition. It looked a hopeless task, but the surgeon remodelled the chin, made a new eyelid, cut out the facial scars, and "made over" the face with grafts from the chest Although the task is not yet quite complete, the patient's face has been restored to a shape so normal that it would pass unnoticed in the street. An honorarv surgeon at one of Sydney's public hospitals, helped by advice from Sir Harold Gillies, the famous New Zealand plastic surgeon, a Macquarie Street"-specialist, and a professor of anatomy at Svdnev University, carried out the difficult work.