In my daughter’s dance class is a girl with a giant face. In every other respect she appears to be perfectly normal, but the lower half of her face–her cheeks, basically–is hugely swollen. She can talk and her mom understand her but because her lips seem unable to close her speech is very unclear.
Any idea what the name of this condition is?
Like the kid from Mask?
Anyone who’s considering Googling ‘giant face disease’ might wanna reconsider. Some very alarming pics. And, although one’s initial reaction may be to recoil, my alarm at least, skyrocketed when I considered for a second what it must be like for the victim. That some children suffer so, is, well, just heartbreaking.
BTW, might the girl in your daughter’s class have neurofibromatosis (ETA: as I now see KneadToKnow asked)?
I thought a tumor would be too obvious as a tumor, and would be unlikely to be symmetric
Crouzon syndrome is connected to englargement of the lower jaw and too much cheek…
There are others. Apert, Pfeiffer, Saethre-Chotzen, Carpenter , and Treacher Collins syndromes
cause deformed facial features… there are other signs that seem to exclude these other ones.
Sounds like Cherubism (see Cherubism - Wikipedia), in which the bones of the lower face and jaw develop lesions that cause the bones to grow unusually large. The picture at the top of the Wikipedia article show a woman with mild Cherubism, but further down are x-rays of people with much more severe disease.
This woman suffering from Cherubism described how difficult it was on a programme broadcast last year
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/facialdisfigurement/PublishingImages/Victoria-Wright-039_377x171.jpg
