A 6-year-old boy from Kyrgyzstan whose skull was left exposed after an attack by large dogs has returned home after treatment in South Korea.
Asan Medical Center said on the 22nd that a team led by Choi Jong-woo, a professor of plastic surgery, invited the boy, Umar, to South Korea and successfully treated injuries that had destroyed about 80% of his scalp. Umar stayed at the hospital for about three months and returned home in good health on the 15th.
Umar, who lived in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, was climbing over a fence in early April to return home after playing with a friend at a neighbor's house when he lost his balance and fell into the yard next door.
Three large dogs in that yard attacked him, leaving injuries severe enough to expose his skull. An area measuring 25 centimeters by 25 centimeters — about 80% of his scalp — was damaged, and his skull was fractured.
Umar was rushed to a nearby hospital, but doctors there said they had never seen a case like it and that there was nothing they could do beyond administering antibiotics to prevent infection.
Most of Kyrgyzstan consists of high mountain terrain, and the difficult geography makes travel inconvenient. Combined with poor medical infrastructure, residents often cannot receive treatment in time.
Umar's parents also had no fixed income, living on a pension worth about 300,000 won (roughly $220) a month.
In late April, local doctors asked for help from an Asan Medical Center team that was visiting Kyrgyzstan to transfer medical expertise. Anticipating that the case would require highly complex surgery, the Korean doctors decided to bring Umar to South Korea.
Umar arrived in July and underwent detailed examinations at Asan Medical Center. Choi initially considered grafting skin tissue from other parts of the body, such as the thigh, onto the scalp. But because hair would never grow on such a graft for the rest of the boy's life, the team instead chose a combination of skin grafting and tissue expansion, gradually stretching the remaining scalp to cover the defect.
The surgery ran into difficulties, including wounds that reopened, but the medical team spent more than two months adjusting the pace as it expanded the scalp in stages. In late September, the team successfully completed surgery to cover the exposed skull with the expanded scalp. The Asan Foundation and Asan Medical Center covered the cost of treatment.
Umar, who said the trip to South Korea for treatment was his first time on an airplane, returned home on Oct. 15 carrying a dream of becoming a pilot.
"We chose a method that uses as much of the remaining scalp as possible, considering not just covering the defect but the life this child has ahead of him," Choi said. "I hope Umar, who stayed bright and brave through a difficult course of treatment, grows up healthy."
"When I go back to school, I will study and read books hard," Umar said. "Thank you to the doctors who treated me."
Asan Medical Center was ranked 27th in Newsweek's World's Best Smart Hospitals 2027 list.