New Delhi: Ophthalmologist of a city hospital, using advanced surgical procedure, gave new hope to a young lady suffering from ‘Marcus Gunn Jaw Winking Syndrome’, a one of the rarest eye deformity.
‘Marcus Gunn Jaw Win-king’ syndrome is a rare form of congenital ptosis or droopy eyelid, where the eyelid moves up and down with the movement of the jaw, while speaking or while chewing.
This occurs as a result of abnormal connections between the nerves that control the muscles that help in chewing and the muscle that lifts the upper eyelid. This causes the “jaw wink”.
According to doctors, born with an eye deformity Reeta (name chang-ed) suffered a lot during her childhood and now in her mid-20s. She, like her peers, wanted to have a career, marriage and children.
Explaining the criticality of the case, senior consultant, ophthalmology, Aakash Healthcare Super Speciality Hospital, Dr. Vidya Nair Chaudhry said, “Reeta was born with the rare eye disorder where her eye lid moves up and down with the movement of the jaw, while speaking or while chewing. When she was examined, we found that the lid droop was actually very minimal, but the eyelid movement with jaw movement was very marked, one of the most severe jaw winking that I had ever seen.”
Talking about surgical procedure, Dr Vidya said, “In a case of simple ptosis, the treatment is a surgical tightening of the weak LPS muscle.
But, in her case, such a procedure would correct the ptosis, but would make the jaw wink even more prominent. Hence, the only solution that we were left with, was to completely remove the LPS muscle, and replace that with an implant. The removal of the muscle results in a total lid droop, a total ptosis, and then a frontalis sling is placed within the lid. This is a silicone sling implant that then connects the eyelid to the frontalis muscle of the forehead above the eyebrow, and this muscle then lifts the eyelid up. That way, both the wink and the ptosis are corrected.”
