Man Grows New Nose on Forehead

After losing his nose due to a car accident and subsequent infection, a patient in China is getting a new one -- on his forehead.

Surgeons at the hospital located in Fuzhou City plan on transplanting the new nose to this nasal spot soon, saying the hardest part of actually growing it is over.

"We have gone through the hardest step and now it is not difficult to carry out transplant surgery," Guo Zhihui, the director of the plastic surgery department of Xiehe Hospital, told the New York Post.

The nose took nine months to grow and represents a medical feat unlike any performed throughout the world.

The physicians were able to grow the nose by placing a skin tissue expander onto his forehead which was cut into the shape of a nose and supported by cartilage taken from his ribs.

The 22-year-old man suffered severe nasal trauma due to a car accident in August 2012. Initially, he opted out of plastic surgery due to financial reasons, according to the Post; however, the lack of surgery led to infection, which caused his nasal cartilage to corrode to the point that traditional nasal reconstruction was no longer an option.

Nicknamed Xiaolian, the patient is not the first to grow a nose in an unusual place, even if his was the first grown on a forehead.

Earlier this year, a British man grew a nose on his arm after losing his own to cancer.

According to the Daily Mail, physicians used photos and CT scans to create a glass mold of the nose. The mold was then covered in a synthetic honeycomb-type material and later sprayed with stem cells taken from the man's bone marrow and multiplied in a lab. Next, the framework for the nose was placed in a bioreactor with the right nutrients needed to encourage the stem cells to form cartilage. After stretching a patch of skin on the man's arm out, the beginning of the nose was implanted on it, allowing it to acquire blood vessels, nerves and a skin covering.

The process was carried out by experts at University College London.