The young man had the right side of his face bashed in one night outside a Montreal bar. After several surgeries gone wrong, he found plastic surgeon Daniel Borsuk. Alex desperately wanted his old familiar face back — without deformities or new scars staring back at him from a mirror.
Borsuk promised to deliver. The resulting scar-free reconstruction procedure, done Oct. 22 at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, is reportedly a Canadian breakthrough in the history of plastic surgery.
Borsuk gained international fame in 2012 as the Canadian doctor on the American medical team that gave a new face to a 37-year-old man horribly disfigured by a gunshot wound. For years Richard Norris lived as a hermit, covering mirrors and never leaving home without a mask. Then in 2012, a team at the trauma centre at the University of Maryland Medical Centre built him a new facial bone structure, including an upper and lower jaw, then they draped an entire face over it — a flap of skin and muscles, tongue and nose, nerves and blood vessels — the first most comprehensive face transplant ever recorded, during a 36-hour marathon in the operating room.
Trained at McGill University and Université de Montréal, Borsuk was then on a fellowship at the centre, and under the mentorship of Eduardo Rodriguez (now at New York University) who led the team that pioneered the cutting-edge face transplant.
Dr. Borsuk spoke at the 2015 ASDA meeting. To continue reading, please visit: http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-plastic-surgeon-performs-ground-breaking-face-reconstruction.
