LOS ANGELES: A young Egyptian girl born with two mouths has had the first round of successful surgery in Los Angeles, her doctors and local news outlets reported on Thursday. With little medical assistance available in the family's native Egypt, and doctors who told the parents that their daughter would not survive, Rokaya Mohamed arrived in LA last month for the first round of surgery. In a first for medicine, a reconstructive surgery was performed on a patient with two fully developed mouths. Through the aid of numerous agencies, including Operation Smile, Mending Kids International and Children of War, Rokaya underwent 12-hour marathon surgery at Children's Hospital LA. Rokaya proved resilient however, and continued to grow and become healthier. “The X-rays, the ultrasound didn't show us how her face is going to be,” Rokaya's father, Tamer Mohamed, told ABC affiliate, KABC-TV, through an interpreter. “We are going to fight to change her life.” The doctor in charge of the surgery was Dr. William Magee III, the Medical Director of International Programs in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Los Angeles Children's Hospital. Magee and his team have performed over 100 facial cleft surgeries on children from over 50 different countries globally. His father, Dr. William Magee Jr, established Operation Smile in 1982. When Magee III heard of her condition, he decided to offer the surgery to the family. “We spent a lot of time planning the surgery, but we made some final decisions on how to go about it while in the operating room,” said Magee III. “The face is made of multiple pieces, so it's like pieces of a puzzle. The cool thing is that we were able to use all those extra pieces in Rokaya's face.” Rokaya will spend Thanksgiving here and return home the first week of December. Magee says surgeons from the U.S. will be helping their Egyptian counterparts handle the rest of her medical care. ** Additional reporting from Cairo by Luiz Sanchez BM
