A desperate effort unfolded to rescue a young girl’s nose following a dog attack.
A Baton Rouge doctor and mother is now sharing her daughter’s extraordinary health journey, aiming to enlighten parents and medical professionals about the importance of the treatment she discovered independently.
Just three months back, little Lucy Nadler, aged five, was having fun with her sister at their uncle’s place. The gentle Labrador unexpectedly nipped at her face, resulting in a portion of her nose being taken off.
“Luckily, they thought to look for her nose on the floor, and luckily they found it, and they put it in a glass of ice, and we transported it to Children’s Hospital,” said Dr. Jen Erbil a Baton Rouge Rheumatologist, who is Lucy’s mother.
After three hours in the operating room, the surgical team successfully reattached it.
“And then we took her home with a near zero percent expected probability that that composite graft would survive, because it had no blood flow, and because this has never really historically ever been reported,” Dr. Erbil said.
By the following day, it started to fade away. Lucy’s mother, Dr. Jen Erbil, a rheumatologist based in Baton Rouge, sought guidance from her physician colleagues. Numerous individuals expressed that no action could be taken. Lucy faced a long journey of reconstruction, potentially spanning months or even years, starting with her forehead skin. However, a friend brought up the possibility of using a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Every moment counted. She sought assistance from Harch Hyperbarics located in Metairie.
“The grafted tissue pinked up within about 20 minutes of hyperbarics. We became very hopeful, and we could see it was getting blood flow,” she said.
For an entire month, Lucy made her way into the tank each day, and on some occasions, she visited it twice in one day. At home, Dr. Erbil relied on a home oxygen concentrator every three hours.
“The hyperbaric treatment then not only oxygenates it, we’re growing new blood vessels to the tissue, and that’s what takes time. This is unprecedented. This has never been achieved,” said Dr. Paul Harch, owner of Harch Hyperbarics.
Dr. Harch is utilizing hyperbaric therapy to aid individuals recovering from various medical or cosmetic procedures. In the case of a facelift, it has been observed that there is a significant reduction in inflammation, an increase in blood flow, and a much quicker healing process for patients.
Lucy’s scars are expected to diminish over the course of a year. If that’s not an option, she has the possibility of undergoing laser treatment for assistance. Dr. Erbil is eager for her colleagues to understand the importance of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
“It’s astonishing to me the benefits of hyperbaric medicine. As a physician, I was not aware of the role of hyperbaric. We are not taught this in medical school. This is severely underutilized,” stressed Dr. Erbil.