LYON, France (Reuters) - French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant -- giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman savaged by a dog.
Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by grafting on tissues, muscles, arteries and veins from a brain-dead woman.
"The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal," the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.
The woman, who was not identified, had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly.
The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the donor.
The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants, and Bernard Devauchelle from the Amiens hospital.
Stephen Wigmore, chair of the British Transplantation Society's ethics committee, said teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality.
Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity to foreign tissue.
ETHICAL QUESTIONS
Iain Hutchins, a facial surgeon and head of the research charity Saving Faces -- The Facial Surgery Research Foundation, said that, although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral and ethical issues.
"This was a ‘quality of life' operation rather than a life-saving operation and has many implications for the recipient's and donor's families," he said. Â*
"The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal," the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.
What does a normal French transplant look like? Good, bad, "patchy", white flaggish-looking, etc.?
They had photos in the London Telegraph yesterday and she looks pretty good.The team said they were careful to find a match for colour,blotches,freckles and wrinkles etc.
Interesting fact,she lost her face as a result of a failed suicide attempt and got her new one as a result of a successful one.[}:)]
They had photos in the London Telegraph yesterday and she looks pretty good.The team said they were careful to find a match for colour,blotches,freckles and wrinkles etc.
Interesting fact,she lost her face as a result of a failed suicide attempt and got her new one as a result of a successful one.[}:)]
Do you get your news from KV or Shabah? dog attacked her last May
They had photos in the London Telegraph yesterday and she looks pretty good.The team said they were careful to find a match for colour,blotches,freckles and wrinkles etc.
Interesting fact,she lost her face as a result of a failed suicide attempt and got her new one as a result of a successful one.[}:)]
Do you get your news from KV or Shabah? dog attacked her last May
Hey guage I bet ya you did not know that it was her own dog did ya? Oh I must be mistaken cause I did not get this fact from the whitehouse's webpage... my bad guage, I am going to the GOP resources and get my facts straight sorry for the interuption... Oh wait where is that link to FOX news?
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