A child who had to have an eye removed after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer has “adapted very well” to a prosthetic designed by doctors who relied solely on scans of his face.
Nuala Mulholland, now a 20-month-old, was diagnosed when she was 10 months old after her mother noticed something was wrong when her eye appeared red.
Nuala, from Liverpool, was initially thought to be suffering from subconjunctival haemorrhage, a usually harmless condition in which a small blood vessel ruptures beneath the clear surface of the eye.
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But her eye began to bulge, prompting her mother, Megan, to take her to the hospital.
Days later, the family was informed that she had a rare form of Cancer which affects an average of just six people in England every year. The condition is known as alveolar soft tissue sarcoma.
“It was just horrible,” Mulholland, 36, said.
“When I took her to the emergency room, I still didn’t think it was something as serious as cancer.”
The family faced the choice of removing the eye or having radiotherapy, but were warned the latter could have a lifelong impact on Nuala due to her age.
Nuala’s prosthetic eye. Photo: PA
Mrs Mulholland said: “Basically, for us, we felt we had to make a good decision between two bad choices – radiotherapy or removing the eye.
“It felt like a rock and a hard place. We had to make the best decision for her.”
Nuala finally had her eye removed and everything was fine in January.
How did doctors design the prosthetic eye?
Doctors used a new method to design and manufacture Nuala’s prosthetic eye, which was less invasive than traditional methods due to her age.
Patients who require this type of prosthesis usually face a long process of removing a wax mold from the eye socket, which is then transformed into a silicone mold.
Nuala surgeon Ankur Raj, consultant in pediatric ophthalmology at Alder Hey, worked with the prosthetics team at Aintree University Hospital.
Raj told PA: “You need to sit there for hours – you’re not going to do that with a one-year-old.”
In Nuala’s case, the team did a series of MRI scans, CT scans and photographs to help them reconstruct her face.
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MRI and CT images were used to shape the prosthesis, while photographs were used to match it to the position of the other eye. The color matching to Nuala’s skin was done personally.
Another advantage of the prosthesis designed for Nuala is that it would not require the child to be put to sleep, something that left her parents relieved, as she had already received anesthesia around 15 times.
She took her first test in June, and doctors recommended she keep it on for a few hours a day to get used to it.
Mrs Mulholland said it was “amazing” what they had managed to achieve and praised the way her daughter had adopted her new prosthetic.
“Like everything, she adapted so well,” she said. “She takes it very calmly.
“She has been very, very resilient,” she added.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
