Who is the mother of face transplant patient Chrissy Steltz?”
A surgical team at Legacy Emanuel Hospital cut an inch-square opening in the skin-and-bone graft where Steltz’s nose used to be. And late in the afternoon, as Steltz came out from under the anesthesia, she breathed through a nasal airway for the first time since March 21, 1999. “She can breathe out of the nose, but we don’t know yet if she can smell,” her mother, Jeannie Steltz, said jubilantly. “I said, ‘Close your mouth and your lips and now breathe like you had a nose,'” Jeannie Steltz said. “And she did.” Sometime next year, after a second surgery heals, doctors hope to fit her with a facial prosthesis — a realistic silicone mask with a nose and glass eyes — and attach it to dental implants drilled into her remaining facial bones. The unusual series of operations, called a total mid-face reconstruction, blends medical and dental techniques. It is a collaboration of teams led by Dr. Eric Dierks, a maxillofacial surgeon, and Larry Over, a Eugene prosthodontist, who will design and
Oregon health and wellness information and medical news Breaking News, Chrissy Steltz, Clackamas County ยป For Milwaukie’s Chrissy Steltz, the journey to a new face begins By Don Colburn, The Oregonian September 30, 2009, 6:00AM chrissybaby.jpgView full sizeRandy L. Rasmussen/The OregonianChrissy Steltz holds her 2-month-old son, Geoffrey Dilger Jr., in her Milwaukie apartment.If her six-hour surgery goes as planned today, Chrissy Steltz will wake up able to breathe through a nasal airway for the first time in more than 10 years. She won’t yet have a nose — just a rectangular opening where the nose should be. But it’s a start. An accidental shotgun blast at close range when she was 16 blew away much of Steltz’s face, including her eyes, cheeks, nose and upper jaw. The first page of her 725-page medical record at Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Medical Center in 1999 gives a stark summary, under Reason for Admission: “Most of face gone.” Today’s surgery begins a new medical effort to give Ste
