Nasal surgery in India gives teenage Iraqi girl reason to smile

New Delhi: With the exception of different body shapes, skin colour and size, a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth are uniform facial features of all men and women and children across the globe.

But what would one go through if one of these organs are in uncommon numbers: for instance, a person having two noses.

For many, this may be a hypothetical situation, but for 17-year-old Benafsha (name changed) from Iraq, this was a painful reality since birth.

Benafsha had a congenital nose deformity, wherein she had two nose bones instead of one. While the condition did not cause serious health complications to her, appearing odd from others was doing no good to Benafsha's mental health.

Moreover, low self-esteem, inferiority complex and dejection had crept into her personality.

However, Benafsha's loving and caring family, surviving with modest means in a war-torn country, was ready to go to any length for her. And after much research, the family decided to come to India.

Dr Ajaya Kashyap, medical director, KAS Medical Centre, said: "The family had come from Iraq with very high hopes, but the situation of the girl was very unusual. It was a kind of medical challenge for us. A reconstruction surgery was her only treatment. Driven by our technical proficiency and determination to help the girl, we went ahead to perform this extremely complicated surgery."

Sharing details of the rare and successful surgery with Millennium Post, he said, "The procedure she underwent involved osteotomies, where a bone is cut to change its alignment or length. The old nose bones had to be broken and a new nose is constructed. Also, the skull bones had to be cut to reshape."

"To reshape bones around her nose and eyes we did osteotomies of the skull bones and bones around the eyes, and to reconstruct the nose at the mid-line, we had to use the rib graft," Dr Kashyap added.

Now, Benafsha's parents are on cloud nine. Sharing his experience in India, Benafsha's father said, "When we started off from Iraq, all we hoped was to help our daughter. But what we received here is beyond expectations. For the first time, we saw our daughter so happy.

"For us, the surgery has changed everything. Now we can help our daughter settle in her life in whichever way she wants, without feeling insecure about her looks," he added.