Anton Novak, 11, from Czech Republic was indeed very lucky. After losing his nose for two hours, he finally got it back. The unfortunate event happened last year on November 17. While the lad was out with his father, a neighbor’s dog—a German shepherd—attacked and bit off his nose. His father beat the dog up and rushed him to St Ann Faculty Hospital in Brno. Police was called to take the dog to the vets where it was killed.

Earlier the hospital had successfully reattached a patient’s ear after being bitten by a dog. Dr Jiri Versely, the chief plastic surgeon said, “Sewing back a nose is not so exceptional in surgery. But we have looked in vain in the specialist literature for a case where a nose was sewed back that had stayed for two hours in a stomach.” He went on by claiming, “It is proof that we are the first to do this.”

The first thing they did was to call the vets to search for the boy’s nose. “We thought it was worth checking inside the dog in case it hadn’t chewed it,” Dr Versely explained. The dog’s belly was then opened and amazingly they found the nose still in one piece; although it was in a poor state that it might cause infection. They carefully sterilized it and used microsurgery to reattach it back to Anton’s face.

“We cut off the digested part, disinfected the rest and put it back,” Dr Versely further said.
It took 11 hour for the team to finish the operation. After ten days, Dr Vesely confirmed that no infection had happened, “It was a very complicated operation but all is well. The boy will be able to breathe normally and will look the same as he did before.”