Osimhen: Face badly crushed… too early to talk about recovery-Surgeon

Super Eagles striker, Victor Osimhen got his face badly crushed but the surgery, Gianpaolo Tartaro has revealed that the operation on the face was successful.

Tartaro said the injury was not a simple cheekbone fracture but that it also affected several bones of the player’s face.

Osimhen sustained the injury during Napoli’s 3-2 loss to Inter Milan at the Giuseppe Meaza last Sunday when he contested the ball with Milan’s Skriniar.

The Nigeria international walked off the pitch with a swollen cheekbone and black eye and was rushed to the hospital afterwards.

A surgery was performed on the face on Tuesday, according to a statement by Napoli, and a recovery time of three months was set by the club.

But Tartaro, one of the surgeons at the operation, said in an interview with 1 Station Radio, that the clash damaged Osimhen’s face badly and it was too early to talk about recovery time.

“Osimhen injury was not a simple cheekbone fracture but also affected several bones of the face,” said the doctor.

“It was not a shock trauma, but compression: the kinetic force generated by the crushing of Osimhen’s face against Skriniar’s created devastating damage.

“It is still too early to talk about recovery times because the surgery was really complex: the conditions of the player’s face were very bad but I guarantee that the surgery was perfectly successful,” he added.

Osimhen is already ruled out of participating at next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) which is billed to begin on 9 January in Cameroon.