What to do if a baby has a nevus of Ota

Every time a baby comes into the world, the whole family is filled with expectations and hopes. However, many babies are born with Nevus of Ota. Nevus of Ota is a type of birthmark that often seriously affects the baby’s image. If not treated in time, it may seriously affect the baby’s physical and mental health during his or her growth, and may even make the baby feel guilty. Therefore, the treatment of Nevus of Ota is critical. Let’s learn about what to do if a baby has Nevus of Ota.

Nevus of Ota, also known as the brown-blue nevus of the palate and oculocutaneous melanocytosis, was first described by Ota in 1938. It is a gray-blue patchy lesion that affects the sclera and the ipsilateral face along the course of the ophthalmic and maxillary branches of the trigeminal nerve. It is more common in people of color, such as Orientals and blacks.

What to do if a baby has a nevus of Ota

The treatment of Ota's nevus is more difficult, and there is no ideal treatment at present. The main treatment methods are:

① Excision and skin grafting can remove diseased tissue, but the color of the skin graft is often difficult to coordinate with the surrounding skin after survival, and there will be incision scars, making the effect difficult for patients to accept.

② The effects of cryosurgery or skin grinding plus cryosurgery are also unsatisfactory.

③Laser is currently the best method for treating nevus of Ota. Because the pigment is darker, short-pulse lasers such as switched ruby, neodymium: yttrium aluminum garnet or alexandrite lasers should be used for treatment.

Conventional treatments include cryotherapy, laser therapy, surgical dermabrasion or skin grafting.

Cryotherapy: Frostbite tissue layer by layer from the surface of the skin to the inside. Due to the deep location of the lesion, cryotherapy may leave scars.

Surgical treatment: The skin of the affected area is ground off like terrazzo, or the skin of the affected area is removed and then skin grafted.

Laser therapy: Burns away the skin layer by layer from the outside to the inside. This method is a popular treatment method nowadays because of its advantage of small postoperative scars.

After understanding what to do if a baby has a nevus of Ota, it is important to treat the nevus of Ota in time after the baby is born, because it will affect the baby's physical and mental health over time, and in the long run it will make the baby feel particularly inferior on the road to growth, so we must pay great attention to it.