• Question: What operations would the tissue expander aid?

    Asked by to Jess on 17 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      It would help with operations where there isn’t enough healthy skin to do it otherwise. We use the expander to stretch healthy skin near to the operation site, this causes the skin to grow. When we have grown enough extra skin, we can take out the implant and pull the healthy skin across to cover the hole we have made during surgery (normally by removing damaged skin).

      This includes:
      Cleft palate repair (where you have a hole in the top of your mouth)
      Skin cancer (where you have taken out a big bit of skin that had cancer on)
      Scar and burn removal (where you need to take out the unhealthy skin)
      Syndactyly (where your fingers are fused together)
      Anophthalmia (where you are born without an eyeball)

      Hope this helps!

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