NYC surgeons remove melon-sized tumor from 5-year-old girl – NBC New York (47)

A pair of Manhattan doctors removed a deadly melon-sized tumor from the face of a 5-year-old Ethiopian girl in an intense surgery that lasted 12 hours, and the little warrior proudly displayed her new look.

Nagalem Alafa, who lives with her family in a rural village in the African country, has never had access to specialized medical care and since she was born she has suffered a “vascular malformation” on her face that has kept her out of school and has prevented her socialize with children their age.

“They were hiding her at home,” explained Kalkidan Alemayehu Gebremariam, who has been helping the girl and her father translate after they arrived in New York for surgery in late June.

“They don’t let her go to school,” added the translator.

The doctors detailed that the benign tumor developed very quickly from birth and Nagalem would have suffocated or starved, due to the inability to swallow, if the tumor had not been removed.

But a US government official met Nagalem’s family in Ethiopia last year while on a mission and decided to help.

After a worldwide search for doctors who could treat the rare condition, the official found Dr. Teresa O and Dr. Milton Waner, a married couple and operating room colleagues at Lenox Hill Hospital, who agreed to perform the $ 500,000 procedure. for free.

Doctors explained in a press conference that it was an extremely dangerous surgery. They even had to explain to the father that there was a possibility that the girl could not make it.

The expert couple said the condition is rarely seen in the country because children generally have that growth removed long before it reaches the size of Nagalem’s tumor.

The girl underwent the complex 12-hour operation on June 23, when O and Waner dissected her facial and neck nerves and carefully removed the tumor and parts of her skin, which had grown around the malformation. Surgeons had to “cautiously navigate the branches of vital nerves and arteries” that could have caused paralysis, severe blood loss and death if they had been accidentally cut, the hospital explained.

The surgery was a success and when Nagalem was brought out of the operating room, his father knelt down and thanked God when he realized that he had succeeded.

“Before I cried, now I smile and praise God and the doctors,” said Father Matios Alafa Haile through Gebremariam, the translator.

“He is very grateful and grateful to the doctors. He’s been looking everywhere for a cure for this cute girl, ”Gebremariam added.

Although Nagalem still has some healing and one more minor surgery left, for the first time in his life, he breathes easy.

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