Pediatric cranial defect, to repair or not? Get the answer from a three-year old case

Three-year old child could be adventurous or bold. When being careless, they could be involved in accident easily. Even worse, they might get cranial injury. In this case, we learn from Professor Mu and his team’s experience of cranial defect repair towards a three-year old pediatric case in Beijing, China.

Ting, a three-year old girl, fell from her bed and was diagnosed with cranial hemorrhage. With emergency operation, she was saved but was living with a visible cranial defect.

According to Ting's mum, Ting did not realize what the defect could mean to her at such a young age. First, the defect leads to obvious collapse on her head which is also a defect from aesthetic point of view. Furthermore, brain tissue protection should be considered. Without cranial protection, Ting should be very careful in daily life to prevent secondary injury such as an unexpected bump on the head from a basketball or a friend. Even worse, when Ting goes to school, she might be bullied by her classmates. With this consideration, the parents decided to get Ting's defect repaired.

Professor Mu, the neurosurgeon whose team specializes in pediatric cranial repair, was in charge of Ting's case. With CT images, the team had reconstructed Ting's cranial defect. Based on the 3D reconstructed images, a precise cranial implant made of polyetheretherketone (PEEK) was designed for Ting. With customized PEEK implant, cranioplasty was successfully performed by Professor Mu's team.

In the surgery, Professor Mu applied his own modified method to separate the scalp, which led to less intraoperative hemorrhage and was beneficial to postoperative incision recovery. With precise and complete separation of layered tissue and fully exposure of bone window, the customized PEEK implant was precisely embedded to the bone window. This implant was fixed well and resulted perfect anatomical restoration.

After surgery, Ting recovered symmetrical, normal appearance for her head. "I can hardly tell the difference between now and before she got injured." Ting's mum commented on it.

One week postoperatively, CT scan was performed as part of follow up. CT image showed the customized PEEK implant precisely embedded in the bone window. CT scan clearly showed that Ting had complete anatomical restoration of temporalis, galea aponeurotica and meningeal. Neither hemorrhage, brain infarction nor any other abnormality were found. The repair was very satisfactory.

The customized PEEK implant, the Recranio? Customized Cranio-Maxillofacial Repair System, was produced by Medprin. We have extensive production and design experience of the cranio-maxillofacial repairing system, benefiting thousands of patients worldwide.

If you are looking for customized cranial implant, work with us, we will give you a satisfactory answer.

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