How to remove a rare craniofacial giant tumor with a titanium plate for the skull?

Mr. Zhang from Hangzhou was attacked by tumors in several parts of his skull and sought medical treatment in many places without success. Prof. Wu Bin of Sanbo Brain Hospital of Capital Medical University led his medical team to perform four surgeries for the patient in five months to remove the tumor and the damaged skull, and repair the defective skull with a huge titanium plate covering 2/3 of the whole skull, which saved the patient’s life and now Mr. Zhang has been discharged from the hospital. Mr. Zhang developed swelling in his right eye in 2008 and found a tumor in the anterior skull base. He visited several famous hospitals in the south and was given two times of tumor removal and radiation treatment, but his condition did not improve and continued to deteriorate. Over the past few years, his right eye gradually became protruding, swollen and dry, his vision in both eyes kept decreasing, and finally his right eye became blind, his right face became prominent and the overall deformation of his head increased, and he also developed headache, nasal congestion, breathing difficulty and cerebrospinal fluid nasal leakage. At the beginning of this year, Mr. Zhang came to Beijing with his family members, visited several major hospitals in Beijing, and had several pathological analyses. Experts considered that he was suffering from an infiltrative malignant tumor, which was huge in size and invaded most of the bones on the cranial surface, and the bones were obviously thickened and deformed on the cranial surface, so surgery was extremely risky, and no one dared to try this surgery easily. Professor Wu Bin led his medical team to analyze Mr. Zhang’s case carefully: the patient’s tumor was huge and invaded many parts of the craniofacial area, including the orbital maxillary area of both eyes, the base of the anterior middle cranial fossa, bilateral frontal bones, right temporal bone, parietal bone and occipital bone, and the mass also blocked the nasal cavity and grew out from the right nostril. The first two surgeries were performed to remove the forehead and occipital bone. The first two surgeries were performed to remove the tumor from the forehead, the top of the head and the back of the head, and to remove the skull that was eroded by the tumor. The skull was twice as thick as normal and the blood supply was rich, so the surgery was very difficult. The third operation ligated the right external carotid artery to cut off the blood source and shrink the residual tumor at the skull base and craniofacial area, creating good conditions for subsequent surgery. The last surgery took the right paranasal-upper lip incision to expose the right craniofacial bone and removed the huge tumor that had grown into the nasal cavity, which was basically hard bone and could not be cut by normal methods, but could only be removed by grinding drill. Professor Wu Bin said that the patient’s brain tumor was very large and it was the largest surgery he had ever done since he started his medical career. The patient had been ill for several years and had been malnourished for a long time, so his body resistance was already very poor. In addition, the tumor had a rich blood supply, a lot of bleeding, a large surgical wound, and a titanium plate foreign body implanted in the brain, so the control of postoperative infection also became the key to the success of the operation.