New ENT on staff in Opp

Published 12:00 am Friday, November 28, 2014

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Dr. Tarik Farrag recently joined the team of physicians at Mizell Memorial Hospital, and brought with him specialties in otolaryngology, or ENT. He has already begun seeing patients who are praising his abilities.

“He’s been doing a great job on me,” Charles Coon said. “I thank the Lord that he brought Dr. Farrag to me.”

Coon said he had chronic nosebleeds for many years and while visiting the ER, he was approached by Farrag and given a solution to the problem.

“I had been to Enterprise and Dothan, and no one knew how to treat me,” Coon said. “Dr. Farrag talked to me one time and knew what needed to be done.

“I bled so bad before I met him that they’d had to give me three pints of blood at the ER,” he said. “Thanks to the Lord that he happened to be on call that day in the ER.”

Farrag said he treated Coon for a previously broken nose through surgery and now Coon can breathe easier.

On a scale from 0 to 10 of ability to breath Coon said his breathing was at 2 percent before the operation, but during his checkup on Tuesday Coon said his breathing was a perfect 10.

The use of minimally invasive endoscopic, microscopic and computer assisted, image-guided 3D technology allows Farrag to view the nasal cavity before surgery, and it also allows patients to view what will he has corrected.

“The newer ENT medicine is not just looking and assuming from the outside, we go in and look with endoscopes,” Farrag said. “Patients can reach a better understanding of their problem by looking at it on the screen before and after surgery.”

Farrag completed his residency at the Medical College of Georgia, and his fellowship in head and neck cancer surgery and facial plastic and head and neck reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Farrag said he was trained in plastic surgery but only works on reconstructive surgery, like facial and nasal traumas.

Ken Worley suffered major damage to his face and nose during an accident at work. Farrag said that Worley had fallen from a ladder and hit his head and crushed his nose.

“He crushed his nose and had fractures in his facial bones, including the bone of the eye, the floor of the orbits,” Farrag said. “He was having double vision and instabilities in his facial bones, and was not breathing at all through his nose.

“We do screws and plates in the face, and we opened him up and placed titanium plates under his eye,” he said. “And his nose was very much deformed; we had to open the chest and take a rib graft to reconstruct his nose.”

During Worley’s second post-operative visit on Tuesday, he told Farrag that he had prefect breathing through his nose and he no longer suffers from double vision.

Besides reconstructive surgery, Farrag corrects problems from tonsils and adenoids, hearing issues, sinus problems, persistent headaches and treatment of sleep apnea.

Annabelle DeWolf suffered from sleep apnea and was told that she had stopped breathing more than 500 times during an eight-hour sleep study.

DeWolf underwent sinus surgery over the weekend to correct the issue. Farrag praised her clear passageways.

“It’s not magic,” Farrag said of the surgery. “It’s going to be a process.”

Farrag’s office is located at the Mizell Medical Clinic at 511 Brantley St. in Opp.

For more information, call 334-493-3240.