Although often regarded as a tool for the vain, a five-year-old Iraqi boy, Youssif, is benefiting from advances in the area of cosmetic surgery as doctors work to restore his features after a horrific attack last January. (Out of concern for the child’s safety the family’s full name has not been disclosed in news reports.)

Masked men doused the young boy in gasoline outside his Baghdad home and set him on fire causing horrific damage and making it almost impossible for the child to eat.

Last month Dr. Peter Grossman, a plastic surgeon with the Grossman Burn Center, donated his services to remove the worst scar tissue on the boy’s face, a mass half an inch thick and, in Grossman’s words as “hard as wood.”

The removal of the tissue relaxed pressure on the boy’s jaw increasing the chances that Youssif will be able to eat more easily and restoring the bottom half of his face to a more normal appearance.

One scar the surgeons removed extended from the boy’s right ear to his left cheek and measured half a foot in length. Additional work was done to restore the child’s lower lip.

Nine weeks prior to the surgery balloons were inserted under Youssif’s right cheek and neck to stretch the skin and to provide surgeons with healthy tissue with which to replace that damaged by the attack.

Grossman estimated a significant difference in Youssif’s appearance within two weeks and predicted a series of minor surgeries in the future to continue repairing the boy’s features.

Youssif, who understandably likes neither doctors nor medical procedures, has endured great pain for a child his age and Grossman hopes the initial surgery will show the boy that what he is undergoing is worth it without traumatizing him further.

In an interview with CNN Grossman said, “For a 5-year-old boy, he has shown a lot of courage in this process. I mean he does not like it at all. But he knows this is a necessary evil.”