Sequelae of cranioplasty surgery

Cranial repair surgery is relatively common in neurosurgery. Skull damage caused by surgical removal of intracranial tumors or brain trauma requires repair surgery. Many people worry that this surgery will leave sequelae. In fact, there is no need to worry about this. The operation only involves the skull and has nothing to do with the brain tissue inside the skull. Moreover, the material used is an imitation skull and has a similar structure to the skull.

Cranioplasty is a relatively common surgical procedure. Craniocerebral trauma and brain surgery to remove bone flaps, resection of benign skull tumors or tumor-like tumors, chronic skull osteomyelitis, etc. can cause skull defects, which urgently require skull repair. Some patients may still have some concerns about undergoing skull repair surgery. For example, some patients with skull defects may worry about the sequelae of skull repair surgery.

This concern accounts for eight out of ten things in life that are not satisfactory. For example, no one wants to be missing a bone under their head. However, due to trauma or surgery, some people inevitably suffer from skull defects, which requires cranioplasty. When it comes to surgery, some patients may be a little worried. Is cranioplasty dangerous?

In fact, cranioplasty is a relatively routine and not too complicated operation in neurosurgery and generally does not pose any danger. The choice of repair material is important. The titanium mesh repair materials currently widely used in clinical practice have certain risks, such as postoperative complications, infection, impact on medical examinations, causing chronic pain, etc. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a material similar to the human skull to repair the skull.

This material exists. Professor Jin Yongjian's team from the Department of Cerebrovascular Disease Neurosurgery at the Air Force General Hospital uses this advanced polyetheretherketone (PEEK) material to repair the skull. This human bone-mimicking material has performance close to that of the human skull and can be integrated with autologous bone without any rejection reaction. Moreover, this material is three-dimensionally reconstructed based on the patient's skull data, which can highly restore the physiological structure of the skull, accurately fit the defect area, and have excellent repair effects.

This can be completely dispelled because this operation does not involve brain tissue at all, so it will not produce any sequelae. And because of the upgrade of skull repair materials, this operation is now safer. Professor Jin Yongjian, director of the Department of Cerebrovascular Disease Neurosurgery at the Air Force General Hospital, uses the latest PEEK to repair skulls for patients. This material is three-dimensionally reconstructed based on the patient's skull morphology, completely restoring the anatomical structure, accurately fitting the defective bone window, and is highly integrated with the autologous bone. This material has comparable performance to autologous skull in terms of elasticity, heat conduction, hardness, stability, etc., and can better adapt to the growth and development of autologous skull, especially for pediatric patients.