Posted on 11/30/2005 10:34:09 PM PST by neverdem
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 woman who received the transplant did not wish to be identified. They gave no details about what measures, if any, had been taken to reconstruct her face short of a transplant. "The patient is well and fine, and the graft is O.K.," Dr. Dubernard said. He said a news conference would be held tomorrow in Lyon to discuss the case.
The surgery represents the first foray into a much-debated realm of medicine. A number of other surgical teams in the United States, France and the Netherlands have announced plans to perform various types of face transplants. But none are known to have performed the procedure. Face transplants are among the most disputed frontiers in transplantation science because they are so risky and no one can say what a patient will look like afterward.
Ethics committees in France and England have rejected proposals to perform full face transplants until...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ditto.
I guess so.
The other thread on this (search FR) had pictures. Very Very heartbreaking. I'm glad something could be done for her. She was a pretty girl before the accident.
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