Restorative Surgery That Patients Can Smile About

Joshua D. Rosenberg, MD, Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is one of only a handful of U.S. surgeons who is using an innovative new procedure to restore the ability to smile in patients with facial paralysis.

The procedure, called cranial nerve V and VII transfer, helps to ameliorate the disfiguring effects of severe Bell’s palsy and, to a lesser extent, certain head and neck cancers. It calls for the surgeon to reroute the patient’s robust masseter nerve—which activates the chewing muscles—in order to power the paralyzed facial nerves and restore facial muscle function, specifically the muscles involved in smiling. (more…)

A New Era for Bone Marrow Transplantation

Seminal research led by James Ferrara, MD, DSc, Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Medicine, has produced a promising approach to treating patients with graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)—a sometimes fatal complication of bone marrow transplantation in which the donor’s immune cells attack the recipient’s body. Bone marrow transplants are often used to treat patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood diseases. (more…)