His jaw hurt, a hole opened in his chin
When Robert V. from Kaunas was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer, a long path of treatment began. He had one kidney removed, bisphosphonate treatment and local radiation.
Despite the fact that the treatment worked positively and the disease receded, because the spine was damaged, drugs were started to drip, which work well on metastases and retain calcium in the bones.
Then, suddenly, severe jaw pain started. The pain was like electricity, piercing, pulsating. It hurt so much that even the strongest painkillers prescribed at the Pain Clinic did not help.
The chin and the side of the jaw protruded through the skin, a hole opened, through which not only saliva, but also pus was constantly dripping. The family says that the everywhere haunting smell of pus was a great discomfort not only for Robert, but also for everyone around him. Robert was simply dying in his eyes, his psycho-emotional condition was deteriorating.
Various doctors and surgeons performed 4 jaw operations in an attempt to remove the consequences, but without success. In the end, the doctors’ verdict was one – there is no more help, there is no other treatment.
The family visited several doctors here in Lithuania, but all of them refused to operate because the risk was too high. Then he turned to the Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden, where such operations are performed, but it turned out that there was a very long queue of patients waiting there. Later, I managed to get in touch with a doctor operating in Croatia, but even here the waiting line was extremely long.
They searched far and found a solution 100 kilometers away
Robert’s family unexpectedly learned that such an operation could be performed by a facial and jaw surgeon, Dalius Matkevičius, head of the Žalgiris clinic in Vilnius.
The patient’s jaw had already been operated on several times, chronic inflammation had developed, and all surrounding tissues had died, so a decision was made to replace the entire jaw with the articular part.
Because the jaw has two joints that work together at the same time, you can’t replace just one joint and expect everything to work. Although surgery within the jaw is relatively safe, fixing the entire jaw to the base of the skull carries a high risk, as any unmeasured movement can be very costly – even the patient’s life.
During this unique operation, the aim was to free the patient from 4 years of excruciating pain, to restore hermeticity so that saliva, food, and liquid from the mouth do not escape through the hole, to remove necrotic, festering jaw bone and thus restore dignity and quality of life.
The operation was smooth and successful
The operation, which lasted more than 5 hours, was successful at the Žalgiris clinic. The very first words uttered by a patient waking up from anesthesia: “I don’t have any pain anymore.” Already in the first days after the operation, the patient not only moved the new jaw, but also spoke.
Facial and maxillofacial surgeon Dalius Matkevičius, who operated on Roberta, says that undertaking such a complicated and dangerous operation required not only a lot of courage and empathy, but also a lot of professional knowledge. Today, the entire operating room team smiles that such operations are a bit of a miracle.
2024-08-19 18:26:50