9-Month-Old Baby Gets Rare Face Surgery After Horrific Wolf Attack

A 9-month-old baby in India recently underwent a rare face surgery after suffering extreme damage to his jaw and skin in a wolf attack.

The victim was attacked by a wolf on the night of March 7 at his home in the southern state of Karnataka. Health officials said the baby boy's lower jaw was completely damaged in the attack and the skin was torn off, New Indian Express reported.

The baby was given first aid at the village primary health center after the attack. He was later shifted to the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) hospital in the town of Hubballi, where doctors conducted the faciomaxillary surgery.

Dr Manjunath Vijapur headed the surgery, assisted by a team from the oral and maxillofacial surgery department and pediatrics department. In the four-hour surgery, they reconstructed the lower jaw and stitched back the skin.

"KIMS has performed such faciomaxillary surgery on elders, but the surgery on a nine-month-old baby has been carried out for the first time in the region. Now the baby is fine and will be discharged in a couple of days," a doctor from the hospital told local media.

Vijapur, who is an associate professor of the maxillofacial surgery department, said the baby’s lower jaw was completely torn off.

“With the help of plates, we reconstructed the jaw and successfully stitched back the skin. After two years, there is a need for secondary correction surgery that will help the baby to grow a jaw naturally like others,” he added. “If the jaw does not develop, we will take a bone from another part of the body and carry out a surgery that will help the jaw to grow. Later, plastic surgery will be carried out to give a scar-free face."

In another rare surgery that recently took place in India, doctors removed a parasitic fetus from the stomach of an 18-month-old child. The procedure took place at a hospital in the western state of Maharashtra. Doctors said the boy had been facing health problems since birth. It was later found he had developed a rare congenital anomaly called fetus in fetu, in which one fetus moves into the body of the other inside the womb. This condition has generally affected one in five million children across the world.