PARIS, Aug 26: A German man has been able to eat his first solid meal in nine years, thanks to a pioneering surgical technique in which the patient incubated a replacement jawbone in a muscle on his back.

The celebratory dinner of bread and sausages eaten by the 56-year-old man marked the first time he had been able to chew since he had had his lower jaw removed because of cancer.

Surgeons led by University of Kiel doctor Patrick Warnke carried out a 3D computer scan of his face to build a small cage of titanium mesh, shaped to act as a substitute for the missing jaw.

The cage was filled with tiny blocks of bone mineral and seeded with a human bone protein and liquid bone marrow, then transplanted into the latissimus dorsi muscle in the patient's back, just under his shoulder.

Seven weeks later, filled with fresh-grown bone, the cage was removed from his back, along with a piece of the adjoining muscle, an artery and a vein. The assemblage was then transplanted into his face.

A month after that operation, the man was able to eat, using the toothless replacement jaw to chew his dinner. Until then, he had survived on soup and soft food. The daring operation, reported in Saturday's issue of the British medical weekly The Lancet, is the first time that doctors have used a patient's own body to incubate and synthesize a substitute for lost bone tissue. It builds on previous experimental work using pigs. -AFP