{"id":2085,"date":"2012-06-23T04:28:37","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T18:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=2085"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:47:58","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:47:58","slug":"zakariyas-second-chance-at-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/zakariyas-second-chance-at-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Zakariya’s second chance at life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Zakariya Elmoustafa at home with his family. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A multidisciplinary team at The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) has saved Zakariya Elmoustafa’s life.<\/p>\n

The two-year-old underwent a series of\u00a0remarkable surgeries, starting at just six-months of age,\u00a0after his brain continued to develop, despite the fact that his\u00a0skull had stopped growing. It was the most severe case of a fused skull ever seen by doctors at the RCH.<\/p>\n

Zakariya was born with a rare syndrome known as\u00a0pancraniosynostosis seen no more than twice a decade in Victoria.<\/p>\n

“The hardest thing was seeing people take a second or third glance at him,” said his mother, Ahlam\u00a0Elakkoumi. “As a parent you want to protect your children from anything, so I’ve just had to hold him much closer. But now he’s free to live life.”<\/p>\n

Neurosurgeon Alison Wray and plastic surgeon David Chong worked together on the case. “It was the most severe case I’d ever seen,” Ms Wray said. “We weren’t able to engage with him. He wouldn’t look at you and it didn’t appear like he was seeing and interacting with his world.”<\/p>\n

A year after his final operation Zakariya is finally able to enjoy the simple things that most take for granted, and he is performing above average in several areas.<\/p>\n

“It’s just like his brain has kicked into gear,” Ms Elmoustafa said. “He’s catching up in every possible way and that’s a miracle.”<\/p>\n

Click here <\/a>to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two-year-old Zakariya Elmoustafa has undergone a series of major surgeries to save his life. He was born with the most severe case of a fused skull ever seen by doctors at the RCH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4947,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/4947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}