'It was like she was growing a second head': Girl, 4, with birthmark the size of a grapefruit is cured...by drug normally used to treat heart conditions

                     

A girl with a facial birthmark the size of a grapefruit has been cured thanks to a new drug treatment.

Jessica Leng, four, developed a pea-sized lump on the left side of her face shortly after she was born. 

The mass continued to grow steadily over the next three months until it was almost the same size as her head - prompting her worried parents to fear she had a deadly tumour.

But, following an MRI scan, doctors discovered that the swelling was actually a parotid haemangioma, a large collection of blood vessels which had built up under Jessica’s skin. 

Her mother, Donna Payne, agreed to allow her daughter to take part in a medical trial in which she was prescribed propranolol, a type of beta blocker which is usually used to treat high blood pressure and heart conditions in adults. 

Incredibly, Jessica’s birthmark has all but disappeared, leaving just a tiny bit of excess skin around her ear.

‘I worried she’d be bullied at school but now you can hardly tell there was ever anything wrong.’

Miss Payne, a nurse from Scarborough, Yorkshire, first noticed a small lump on Jessica’s face when her little girl was just two-weeks-old.

Concerned, she consulted her midwife, who reassured her it was a benign birthmark and was nothing to worry about.

But soon the lump had swelled alarmingly to the size of a golf ball and had become hot and pulsating.