CANINE'S NIP CLIPS OFF MAN'S LIP.Byline: Usha Sutliff Staff Writer NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Turns out, a man's best friend isn't his boss's dog. A 22-year-old North Hollywood man recently had his top lip bitten off by his boss's Rottweiler-shepherd mix. The lip was surgically reattached and the man was in stable condition at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. ``Hopefully it'll take,'' said Dr. Jeannette Martello, a Pasadena plastic surgeon plastic surgeon A surgeon specialized in reconstruction or cosmetic enhancement of various body regions, most commonly the face–nose, chin, and cheeks, breasts and buttocks; PSs remove fat deposits through liposuction; PSs reduce scarring or disfigurement , on Thursday. ``There was excellent blood flow to the lip. It's pink and it's living.'' The North Hollywood man was bending down to pet his boss's dog Wednesday morning when the animal growled and then bit off much of his top lip, including a portion of his mustache, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. hospital spokeswoman Connie Matthews. The wound on his face measured about 2 inches across by 1 inch high. At the family's request, little information was released about the man, except that he works as a service technician for an electric company. No information was available about where the incident took place or what happened to the dog. The man spent most of Wednesday in the operating room operating room n. Abbr. OR A room equipped for performing surgical operations. and was kept under heavy sedation Sedation Definition Sedation is the act of calming by administration of a sedative. A sedative is a medication that commonly induces the nervous system to calm. Purpose The process of sedation has two primary intentions. until mid-afternoon Thursday. Martello said the surgery was challenging because she had to locate and then reconnect incredibly small portions of the labial artery labial artery n. 1. An artery with origin in the facial artery, with distribution to the lower lip, and with anastomoses to the chin and lower lip arteries; inferior labial artery. 2. - both in the face and in the severed lip. Those efforts included searching for attachments to the serpentine artery in the severed lip, which - because of muscle contraction - had shrunk to roughly half its usual size. Once she found the attachments, Martello said it was a matter of sewing the lip back on while reconnecting the blood vessels Blood vessels Tubular channels for blood transport, of which there are three principal types: arteries, capillaries, and veins. Only the larger arteries and veins in the body bear distinct names. using sutures that are roughly one-fifth the size of a human hair. The task wasn't easy, she added, given that the vessels she was dealing with were, at most, a millimeter wide. ``On the right side, the artery was so small that I was only able to put one suture suture /su·ture/ (soo´cher) 1. sutura. 2. a stitch or series of stitches made to secure apposition of the edges of a surgical or traumatic wound. 3. to apply such stitches. 4. through,'' she said, noting that it was a first for her. Martello said the surgery appeared to have restored blood flow to the area. ``I pricked (the lip) with a pin today. It's bleeding bright red blood,'' she said. The man may need to undergo some cosmetic surgery cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery for cosmetic purposes, such as the improvement of the appearance of the face by removing wrinkles or reshaping the nose. in the future, she added, ``but for now everything we've done is exactly what we're supposed to be doing, to date.'' One factor that could hurt the man's recovery is that he's a pack-a-day smoker, according to the surgeon. She said that smoking - which constricts blood vessels - can impair the healing of a wound for up to seven hours. So a pack-a-day smoker, for example, would have ``decreased wound healing'' for 20 out of 24 hours. ``I am extremely surprised, to be honest, (that) being a smoker, his arteries have stayed open this long,'' Martello noted. The surgeon said that Thursday she consulted with a San Francisco- based doctor whom she referred to as the ``grandfather of microsurgery microsurgery or micromanipulation Surgical technique for operating on minute structures, with specialized, tiny precision instruments under observation through a microscope, sometimes equipped with cameras to show the operation on a monitor. .'' Dr. Harry Buncke told her he had done about 13 lip ``replantations,'' 11 of which stemmed from dog bites and two from human bites, according to Martello. This patient's family was ``very, very pleased'' with the operation, the surgeon reported. ``I think it went very well,'' Martello said. |
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