Advanced Technology Institutions due to Smile Restoration Service

The Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital at Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv has been included in the prestigious ranking of the 30 most technologically advanced pediatric hospitals in the world by the Top Masters in Healthcare Administration website, published in March, 2016.

The children’s hospital was ranked 19th thanks to a unique and innovative plastic micro-surgery procedure for the restoration of paralyzed facial structures.

Only five hospitals out of the 30 ranked are located outside of North America: Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv, two hospitals in Great Britain, a hospital in Tokyo and a hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

The procedure for which the hospital received its ranking involves a series of complex micro-surgeries to restore function to paralyzed facial structures. Paralysis may be due to accidents, serious illness or congenital deformities.  This procedure is currently performed in only a few institutions worldwide and only three pediatric hospitals worldwide perform the procedure on children; among them, the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

The complex procedure is performed in two stages over the course of many months. In the first surgery, a live nerve tract is harvested from the patient’s leg and transferred to the undamaged side of the patient’s face, where a nerve is grafted and crossed over to the paralyzed side as if it were an electrical cable. Nine months later, the healthy nerve sprouts within the tract as the healthy side acting as an electrical conducer.  At this stage, the patient is ready to undergo a second procedure in which a muscle is harvested from the inner thigh and transplanted into the paralyzed side of the face where it is attached to the nerve crossed over from the functional side of the face.  In this manner, after a period of six months, the medical team is able to successfully restore a smile to the patient’s face.

Prof. Gur and his team have refined the technique and perform an even more complex procedure in which instead of using an electrical extension cord, or “cable” from the undamaged side of the patient’s face to the paralyzed side, the graft is interposed into intact nerves on the affected side and guided to the damaged regions on the same side.

The Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital is also well recognized for its excellence in dozens of pediatric specializations. In fact, Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital is one of the few medical centers in Israel that hosts pediatric surgeons trained at the best children’s hospitals in North America. As a result, pediatric surgeons at Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital are noted for their groundbreaking work in microsurgical reconstruction, a novel procedure which can cure partial paralysis by transplanting and grafting tissue from large muscle groups to affected areas.

Prof. Gur and the unique micro-surgery procedure he performs were also mentioned in an article published in the past in “Newsweek” which named 10 leading professionals in their medical fields worldwide. The article recounts the story of Ahmed Fakhouri, a young Palestinian who suffered serious injuries from a car accident in Jenin.  Part of a windshield from one of the cars involved in the accident flew into the left side of Fakhouri’s face. He was treated by Prof. Gur, who successfully restored his facial function and his smile.

Prof. Gur says, “When you see a patient smile for the first time, whether it is a child or an adult, you yourself begin to smile.  We are giving people their lives back, and the recognition we are receiving, both from patients and institutions in Israel and abroad, is heartwarming.”