Port Elizabeth gets new smiling faces this week!

25 Eastern Cape children will soon have a new reason to smile

Specialist paediatric surgeries planned for upcoming

PE Provincial Hospital Smile Week

An ear reconstruction, nasal reconstruction and the correction of a nasal duplication where a little girl was born with three nostrils are among the more complex paediatric surgeries that will be undertaken during the Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital Smile Week sponsored by ACSA, which takes place from 14 to 18 August 2017.

Seven-year-old Almare was born with microtia, a rare birth defect that only affects around one in 6000 children, where the external ears remain small and malformed. Almare is shy and soft spoken, and although she attends a regular school where she is a top achiever in her class, her hearing remains muffled.

To rectify this and ensure Almare’s hearing is greatly improved, surgeons will reconstruct the affected ear using cartilage and bone.

In a similar procedure, surgeons last month used rib cartilage and skin from the forehead, to make a nasal strut for 16-year-old Imildo who lost part of his nose to a severe nasal infection. Doctors reconstructed a full nose head flap for Imildo a month ago, and will complete the procedure next week during the Smile Week.

In an extremely rare condition, one-year-old Likum was born with an extra nostril. Called nasal duplication, the condition is believed to be as a result of an accessory olfactory pit appearing either above or below the patient’s normal nostrils. Likum will undergo surgery to close the extra nostril.

Almare, Imildo and Likum are just three of 25 children from across the Eastern Cape who will receive surgeries as part of the Smile Week. The other operations include cleft palate repair, cleft palate fistula repair, contracture releases, nasal duplication correction, and a full cleft lip and palate repair.

“Plastic surgeons from other academic hospitals will be flying into Port Elizabeth to assist Dr Chris van der Walt in offering two theatres for surgeries. This enables us to help so many more patients and ensure they receive these surgeries they so desperately need during this specialised week. We thank Dr Chris van der Walt and his team of doctors and medical staff at the Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital for their support and for organising these surgeries. We look forward to assisting them in putting happy smiles on the faces of these children and their family members in due course,” says Smile Foundation Operations Executive Director, Moira Gerszt.