Surgery for boy born without lower jaw

An Irish teenager who was born without a lower jaw will get a chance at a normal life thanks to doctors at a New York hospital.

Alan Doherty underwent the first of at least two operations yesterday at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre to give him a mandible and chin.

Alan, 17, is one of two people known to have the condition, called otofacial syndrome, the hospital said.

The teenager cannot breathe without assistance and cannot eat or speak. He gets nutrition through a tube inserted into his stomach and communicates through typing out messages on a keyboard he wears attached to a computer that speaks for him.

“People are always staring at me from when I was small to today or yesterday, which I don’t like, but I am used to it,” he typed.

Doctors at the hospital planned to use a piece of Doherty’s hip bone as a replacement for his lower jaw. Yesterday, they moved the bone to his back, where it will be nourished and will gather nerves, the hospital said.

The bone will be moved to his face in an operation planned for later this year.

Doherty typed that he hoped to get “a perfect chin” out of the operations.

The idea for the operations came about when Doherty, from Letterkenny, Donegal visited the US last year to participate in athletic games put on by the Physically Challenged Irish and American Youth Team.

Team director Bill Broderick said that he had asked Doherty if he wanted anything while he was in America, and Doherty said: “Mr Broderick, can you get me a face?”

Broderick said his charity organisation was still raising the money to pay for the surgery, which costs more than $100,000 (€75,000).