The Embarrassing Bodies doctors return to Channel 4 at 9pm tonight for a new series. In the first episode Dr Christian meets an extremely brave man who reveals the extraordinary extent of living with half his face missing.
Eric, 60y old, is a lovely man who had cancer of the face and lost his left eye, cheek, and jawbone and much of his skull. He could not have a surgical reconstruction due to the extraordinary size of the defect and the radical radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment he received limiting his capacity to heal.
The only option was therefore to work with a silicone facial prosthesis – but because of its considerable size and bulk, this needs to be anchored by implants – which is tricky as much of the bone has been removed from this size of the face. Andrew Dawood, who has spent more than 20 years working with dental implants, and has a particular interest in working with people who lack bone for ordinary dental implant treatments, has used Cavendish Imaging for essential 3D imaging and printing technologies and plan novel treatment. Andrew has placed implants into the rim of the eye socket (orbital implants), and also used specially designed implants (a special, extra long ‘zygomatic implant’) that extends across the remaining half of the jaw, to the missing side, for the anchorage of the prosthesis.