{"id":38651,"date":"2014-08-12T12:10:47","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T12:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=38651"},"modified":"2014-08-12T12:10:47","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T12:10:47","slug":"boy-has-ears-created-from-ribs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=38651","title":{"rendered":"Boy has ears created from ribs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine-year-old Kieran Sorkin had the surgery at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.<\/p>\n

About 100 children a year in the UK are born without one or both ears, a condition known as microtia.<\/p>\n

Kieran was born deaf with small lobes where his ears should be. He can already hear, thanks to previous surgery to implant a hearing aid.<\/p>\n

“I want people to stop asking me questions”, said Kieran from Hertfordshire. “I’d like just to look like my friends.<\/p>\n

“I’d also like to be able to wear sunglasses and earphones.”<\/p>\n

Kieran’s mum Louise Sorkin said: “He’s a very sociable boy and has longed for this operation for years.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want children bullying him because he’s different. I just want him to be accepted like everyone else.”<\/p>\n

On the morning of the operation, consultant plastic surgeon Neil Bulstrode stencils the shape of Louise Sorkin’s ears.<\/p>\n

He said: “When a patient has one ear we can match the new ear to that. Fortunately Kieran’s mum has very pretty ears so that should work well.”<\/p>\n

Psychological benefits<\/p>\n

In theatre the surgical team remove cartilage from six of his ribs. It is cut, shaped and sewn.<\/p>\n

\"ears<\/div>\n
Kieran’s ears were shaped from cartilage taken from his ribs<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

These frameworks are inserted in pockets in the skin and then using suction, they take on the shape of an ear on both sides.<\/p>\n

Great Ormond Street Hospital does about 40 of these operations each year, although most of those are to create one missing ear.<\/p>\n

The surgery is cosmetic, not to improve hearing. But Mr Bulstrode said it brings huge psychological benefits.<\/p>\n

“If you can change the confidence of a patient at this young age, you can change their whole trajectory in life.<\/p>\n

“You see this when they come back. It’s a huge boost for them.”<\/p>\n

Tissue engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advances in tissue engineering mean that this kind of reconstructive surgery could be done quite differently within a decade.<\/p>\n

Scientists at the Institute of Child Health (ICH), part of University College London, are creating stem cells from patients’ fat tissue.<\/p>\n

The Institute, which is Great Ormond Street Hospital’s research partner, induces the cells to make cartilage or bone.<\/p>\n

Dr Patrizia Ferretti, leader of the ICH’s Development and Regeneration Group, who is leading the study, said: “This approach would be far less invasive for a child than the current method of harvesting a child’s rib cartilage.”<\/p>\n

Last year scientists in the US\u00a0implanted a human-like ear, grown from cow and sheep cells, onto a rat.<\/p>\n

But such research is still at its early stages, and for the foreseeable future children needing new ears will benefit from the same procedure used at Great Ormond Street Hospital.<\/p>\n

Three days after surgery, Kieran is given a mirror to look at his new ears.<\/p>\n

\"Kieran<\/div>\n
Kieran is delighted with his new ears<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

His first reaction was “Wow!”. Kieran started to giggle, but the operation on his ribs means it hurts when he laughs.<\/p>\n

Kieran will need a second operation in six months to make his ears stand out from the scalp more, but he’s already delighted with the result.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nine-year-old Kieran Sorkin had the surgery at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital. About 100 children a year in the UK are born without one or both ears, a condition known as microtia. Kieran was born deaf with small lobes where his ears should be. He can already hear, thanks to previous surgery to implant a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":38653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,7],"class_list":["post-38651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-togbe-afede-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}