14 DAY TRIAL // Plastic surgery may be widely known as the ultimate expression for vanity, but the truth is that it can be essential for certain people to live a normal life. Especially when those people are children.
One particular toddler, a girl by the name of Violet, is in line to be put through a surgery that has to repair not only deformities on her facial skin but her skull as well.
Her skull has to be cut in order to bring the eyes closer together, not to mention that the sides of her nose are too far apart. The picture says it all.
It is the good fortune of Violet and her parents that Dr. John Meara of the Boston Children’s Hospital is familiar with 3D printing technology.
It allowed for the examination to go quickly, while a model of the girl's skull and face will help the surgeon and his team properly plan the intervention.
This was one of the problems with preparation taking too long: young children develop quickly, so her bone structure is already different from when her frontal nasal dysplasia was first examined.
They made a model of the skull and compared it to the one they made previously, thus tracking the changes in the bone dimensions. This allowed them to plan their actions and decide on what changes would be made that would not be undone or cause complications due to the child's natural development.
Below is the first video in a four-part series that chronicles Violet's story. The fourth and final part has not been released yet, but we're expecting full success.
