'Teddy Bear' Surgery for Parry-Romberg Sydrome; Christine Honeycutt Gets Her Face Back

11-year-old Christine Honeycutt suffers from Parry-Romberg syndrome, a rare disease which causes half of her face to deteriorate. The affected side of Christine's face appeared to age faster, and would eventually waste away.

Parry-Romberg Syndrome: NIH Info

Photos of Parry-Romberg Syndrome Patients (Graphic)

Also known as progressive hemifacial atrophy, Parry-Romberg syndrome is an immune-system disorder that affects maybe one in a million people and tends to strike when the patient is between five and 15 years old. There is no cure for Parry-Romberg syndrome, but there are surgical options, as Christine Honeycutt and her family found out.

Christine's mom, Vicki Honeycutt, contacted a plastic surgeon named Dr. John Siebert, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. Siebert is a microsurgery specialist, and has operated on 140 Parry-Romberg syndrome patients.

Building a Teddy Bear

Siebert described the operation to rebuild Christine Honeycutt's face as "building a teddy bear", taking healthy tissue from Christine's armpit and implanting it beneath the skin of her face. The implanted tissue then grows along with the surrounding tissue, so the two hemispheres of the girl's face grow at similar speeds. (Not at exactly the same speed, since the human body is bilateral, growing in alternating steps- that's why one of your arms is ever so slightly longer than the other. )

The surgery on Christine Honeycutt's face was a success, but this doesn't have a fairy-tale ending. Christine must undergo regular fine-tunings, and may require another major surgery at some point down the line. For now, though, it looks like Christine Honeycutt can go back to school and be treated normally by the other kids.

Parry-Romberg Surgery: How Does It Work?

The strange thing is that nobody is 100% sure how the surgery works. For now, the answer is, "it just does". We at NowPublic are not microsurgeons, but could there be an overlap here with the Skin Gun, which was itself a huge leap forward in stem-cell medicine?

The relocated tissue will grow along with Christine as she matures, Siebert says -- although he can't explain how. It could be that the transplanted tissue and blood vessels restore normal blood supply to the damaged side of the face and allow the cells of different tissues to "talk to each other" in ways that prevent further atrophy, he says.