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By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 11, 2010 21:20:43 EST

SAN ANTONIO — Col. Alan Sutton knows he can make lives better. He just has to get the word out. Sutton and a team made up of other doctors and highly skilled technicians at Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force’s premier hospital in San Antonio, painstakingly restore the faces of service members injured in war.

They create custom-fit pieces to replace missing jaw bones and sections of skull. Much of their work is even more delicate — eyes, ears, noses and teeth to replace the real ones blown away or seared off by fire.

“We’re a little-known department that has a tremendous impact on people’s lives,” Sutton said of the facial prosthetics program, one of only two within the Defense Department. The other is at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

In the last three years, Sutton’s team has outfitted 29 wounded warriors from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 21 soldiers, six Marines, one airman and a sailor.

One of the soldiers is Staff Sgt. Shilo Harris, who suffered severe burns when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Iraq. He’s getting a new pair of ears.

“I think it would be nice to take some attention off my aerodynamic abilities,” Harris said with a smile, referring to ... Read the rest of the story here.

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How significant is medical are such as this? Do you know anyone who would benefit from this?