It seems like something out of a science fiction movie.  A doctor uses one portion of a man’s body and puts it onto his head.  Now, the man has a nose growing from his forehead.  Seemingly creating a disfigured monster, the doctor has actually used a revolutionary new method of transplantation, reports the Seattle Times.

The surgeon, Guo Zhihui at Fujian Medical University Union Hospital in China’s southeastern province of Fujian, spent nine months cultivating a graft from the man’s rib cartilage.  He implanted that under the skin of the forehead to prepare the nose for transplantation.  The nose on the forehead is placed with the nostrils facing diagonally upward, creating even more media buzz for the striking nature of the image.  The patient, a 22-year-old man, damaged his nose in an accident in 2012.  An infection later ate away much of the remaining nose cartilage.  Guo plans to cut the nose from the forehead while leaving a section of skin connected, and then rotate and graft it into position in a later operation.

Surgeons previously have used cartilage to help rebuild noses in their proper position and are experimenting with growing new ones from stem cells on other parts of the body, such as a forearm. This was the first known case of building a nose on a forehead.  Using natural tissues can be important to the success of the transplantation.  The website of Dr. Mark B. Constantian, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon specializing in nose jobs, states that Dr. Constantian advocates using only a patient’s own natural bone and cartilage because artificial materials often produce unsatisfactory or unsafe results.

Alexander Seifalian, a professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London who has worked on transplants using stem cells, validated the methods of the Chinese surgeon.  He said that implanting the nose graft in the forehead makes sense because the skin there has a similar structure and texture as the nose.  However, he did not understand why the medical team chose not to implant the nose in the proper position.

Guo said his team examined what remained of the nose and concluded there would be little chance of viably grafting cartilage there, instead building the nose on the forehead, reports the Washington Post. When the new nose is rotated into position and grafted, it will at first have its own blood supply from links to the forehead, before developing new blood vessels. Later surgery will smooth out all of the skin.