Sammy Zodinsanga: Joys unlocked. Picture by Amit Datta

A team of city surgeons has fixed an 11-year-old Mizo boy’s locked jaw that could not be set right for seven years. Doctors from Guwahati had operated on the boy twice.

A dentist in Aizawl had extracted a tooth from Sammy Zodinsanga’s lower jaw when he was four years old. The boy, a resident of Republic Veng in the Mizoram capital, found it very difficult to open his mouth after the procedure.

“Sammy has not been able to eat properly since his tooth was extracted. He has been on a liquid or semi-liquid diet,” said the boy’s mother, Kaptluangi.

Sammy’s parents took him to several local dentists when the boy started losing weight rapidly. The doctors failed to fix the problem.

The parents then took Sammy to a hospital in Dispur, Guwahati, where he underwent surgeries in 2002 and late-2004.

“The surgeries aggravated the problem. Around three months after the second operation, Sammy could not open his mouth at all. He was surviving on milk, water and fruit juice. Even inserting a straw into his mouth was painful,” recounted the boy’s elder brother Ralte.

“Sammy didn’t want to eat because of the pain. His health deteriorated and studies suffered. We didn’t want him to undergo another surgery. A local doctor suggested that we take him to specialist elsewhere,” added Ralte.

Sammy was admitted to Calcutta Medical Research Institute (CMRI). A team led by the hospital’s consultant maxillo-facial surgeon Debadeep Chakravarty operated on him for more five hours at the end of last month.

“Due to some infection, the right side of the boy’s lower jaw was clamped with the skull bones. As a rule, if one side of the jaw is locked, it becomes impossible to move the other side of the jaw,” said Chakravarty.

The surgeons reconstructed the jaw joints on both sides of Sammy’s face. They took muscles near the ear and put them between the new joints.

“It was a complicated procedure. We are happy that we could fix the problem,” said Rupak Barua, chief operating officer of CMRI.

Sammy, a student of Class V, is recuperating fast. “I want to be a dentist,” he said.