Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Chinese boy born with a 'mask'

A Chinese boy has been born with a double face, making him look like he is wearing a mask. His mother, Yi Xilian,said that her 14-month-old son, Kang Kang, is suffering from a congenital facial cleft, and his mouth is cracked up to his ears.

Professor Wang Duquan of Changsha Hospital in Hunan province said there are many possible reasons, like disease infection during embryo development, taking medications during pregnancy, and so on.



Professor Wang said it's the first such case he ever met. "It's different from a cleft lip or cleft palate; it's a facial cleft. Not only his face muscles are cleft, but the inside bones are cleft." Professor Wang said judging from the current situation the boy is only suffering from the facial cleft, and his intelligence should be normal.

His mother said that during her pregnancy she didn't take any medication except some abortion prevention agents prescribed by the doctors at Xiangxiang Women and Children's Hospital.



Professor Wang said Kang Kang at least needs to receive two surgeries. The surgeries would sew up the clefts on the surface skin, the deep muscle, and then reconstruct the facial bones.

Professor Wang said they'll try their best to resume a normal look for the baby, but as they have never seen such a case before, the results are unpredictable.

4 comments:

Jacki said...

That's a first time seeing such a strange deformity. Poor family. Lots of expensive surgery in store for years to come for this child. 

232323 said...

"some abortion prevention agents"? I have to wonder - when we can't trust toys from China to not be toxic, how about their "abortion prevention agents"... whatever that is?

L said...

That was my first thought, too.  And why would you need "abortion prevention agents"?  (I'm not even sure if there is such a thing... so who knows what she was persuaded to put into her body!)

Foreigner1 said...

You would need that when the famale body has a tendency to consider the new foetus a foreign i.e. hostile, threatening and invading body. That happens from time to time and in those cases the pregnant woman has to take medication to prevent her losing her own child.