After a tumor destroyed 15-year-old Kessa Kendall’s jawbone and her teeth, doctors at a US children’s hospital were able to find a replacement from her own leg.
Kendall, who travelled from Guyana to Nashville for the 11-hour surgery, is now recovering, according to a report on the WKRN-TV News 2 website.
She was seeing doctors at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, where the surgery was performed, for checkups on Thursday, the report added.
Dr Sarah Rohde, a surgeon at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, explained that Kendall had a benign tumor of the jaw that was not cancerous. “It’s not a risk for spreading but it is difficult because it destroys the local tissue,” she told News 2.
“Luckily your body has extras,” said Rohde. “One of those extras is in your fibula, which is the bone on the lateral side of your leg, and we’re able to take out the middle portion of that and bend it, or cut it, into the shape of a jawbone,” she added, before noting that the bone will heal in her jaw just like any other broken bone.
According to Kendall’s doctors, she will receive dental implants in the near future and after some healing, most of the scarring from the surgery will disappear. “We got all of the tumor out,” Dr. Rohde said. “So this should heal as expected. She’s healing wonderfully, so she should not have a problem with this in the future,” she added.
The News 2 report said Kendall and her parents were referred to Vanderbilt by a friend of a friend and they tad to get a visa to make the trip and plan to be in Nashville for the next couple of weeks.
“I was really worried,” the girl’s mother, Kathy Kendall, said, explaining that while doctors did reassure her, it would have been a pretense if she were not worried about the prospect of her only child undergoing the surgical procedure. “I knew what was going to happen and the reason for coming, so all of this was expected. It was, I must say, it was simpler than I expected,” she said.
