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LYON, France -- A woman who underwent the world's first partial face transplant regained consciousness 24 hours after the groundbreaking operation and her first words were "thank you," one of her doctors said Friday. The 38-year-old woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, was mauled by a dog in May. She underwent the transplant Sunday at a hospital in Amiens, northern France. The donor was a brain dead woman. The operation was done by Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard and Dr. Bernard Devauchelle. "There were no post-surgical problems," Devauchelle said at the doctors' first news conference. Behind him were projected images of...

Surgeons in France have for the first time performed a partial face transplant, a surgeon who led one of the two teams that performed the operation said yesterday. The recipient of the transplant was a 38-year-old woman who had been severely disfigured in an attack by a dog, said the surgeon, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon. The operation was carried out in Amiens on Sunday. In a brief telephone interview, Dr. Dubernard said the two surgical teams had grafted a nose, lips and chin from a donor who had been declared brain dead onto the woman's face. Hospital officials said...

The world's first partial face transplant has been performed on a 38-year-old French woman, whose lips and nose were ripped off in a dog attack, the surgeon who carried out the operation told AFP. Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who performed the world's first hand transplant in 1998, confirmed news reports that the transplant had taken place, without giving further details. According to Thursday's issue of the French news magazine Le Point, a team of surgeons led by Dubernard and Professor Bernard Devauchelle carried out the operation on Sunday and Monday in the northern French town of Amiens. In...

CLEVELAND: Five US men and seven women will secretly visit a medical clinic in Ohio in coming weeks to vie for the chance to have a radical operation that has never been tried anywhere in the world. They will smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes and open their mouths. The Cleveland Clinic's Maria Siemionow will study their cheekbones, lips and noses. She will ask what they hope to gain, and what they most fear. Then she will ask: "Are you afraid you will look like another person?" Because whoever she chooses will endure the ultimate identity crisis. Dr Siemionow...

In the next few weeks, five men and seven women will secretly visit the Cleveland Clinic to interview for the chance to have a radical operation that's never been tried anywhere in the world. They will smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes, open their mouths. Dr. Maria Siemionow will study their cheekbones, lips and noses. She will ask what they hope to gain and what they most fear. Then she will ask, "Are you afraid that you will look like another person?" Because whoever she chooses will endure the ultimate identity crisis. Siemionow wants to attempt a face transplant....

In an emergency room at a Finnish hospital, a man sprawled unconscious on an operating table as surgeons labored to reattach the hand he had lost hours earlier while chopping wood. Medical miracles take many forms, but few are as vivid and immediate as this: As the tiny blood vessels were sutured back together, the patient's hand flushed from porcelain to pink. The delicate tendons of the palm revived, and the skin's granite glaze began to soften. The man's fortunes had taken a remarkable turn. So, too, had those of Dr. Maria Siemionow, a surgical resident assisting in the operation....

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) - A team of doctors from Louisville and the Netherlands say in a new medical journal article that they are ready to perform a face transplant, a procedure considered controversial by some medical ethicists. "There arrives a point in time when the procedure should simply be done. We submit that that time is now," the researchers wrote in an article scheduled for publication Friday in The American Journal of Bioethics. The procedure attaches the face of a dead donor to someone with a severely disfigured face, such as a burn or accident victim. The doctors said they...

LONDON - British surgeons hoping to become the first to perform a total face transplant have received interest from potential patients around the world. Plastic surgeon Peter Butler and his team at the Royal Free Hospital in London have had requests for information from 10 people since their pioneering work first came to light. Surgeons in the US are also working on the procedure, which would involve grafting the face of a dead person on to someone who had suffered severe facial disfigurement such as burns. But the issue has proved controversial, raising questions over the moral and psychological issues...