Seychelles teenager seeks expert Indian medical help

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Eighteen-year-old Dylan from Seychelles considers himself unique - he is the only person living without kidneys in his tiny island nation, where there is no nephrologist to treat him.

“I had a kidney transplant in Chennai when I was eight years old - my aunt gave me her kidney. But the organ got rejected, and for the past five years, I have been surviving on three sessions of dialysis per week on the only dialysis machine in my country,” quips Dylan, who is surprisingly upbeat, despite the fact that most of his mouth is filled with a painful tumour.

Presenting the boy before experts from across the globe, craniofacial surgeon, Dr S.M. Balaji, explained that Dylan’s kidney ailment led to the damage of his parathyroid glands. As a result, his body is now forming tumours - the first of which is in his lower jaw.

“The growth, called “Brown’s tumour” is growing at a rapid rate. Dylan is already unable to talk or swallow his food properly, but if we do not operate immediately, it could crack his skull,” says Dr Balaji, who has scheduled the tricky surgery for later this week.

The boy’s entire jaw will be taken out, and re-constructed using a biological material called bone morphogenetic protein (BMP).

“We do not know how his body, already reeling under an auto immune disease and an abnormal calcium metabolism, will react to such a major surgery.

Cases such as Dylan’s is the reason we need more research into such rare conditions,” pointed out Prof Rena D’Souza, president of the American Association for Dental Research, who is attending the international conference on research in craniofacial biology organised at Balaji Dental and Craniofacial hospital, along with a panel of experts from Europe and the US.

While the group was moved to tears by Dylan’s optimism, two other children from Seychelles, who have already undergone surgery to correct birth defects of the skull, were also presented before the expert panel.