LYON, France – Doctors in France said they had performed the world’s first partial face transplant, forging into a risky medical frontier with their operation on a woman disfigured by a dog bite.
The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and chin grafted onto her face from a brain-dead donor whose family gave consent. The operation, performed Sunday, included a surgeon already famous for transplant breakthroughs, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard.
“The patient’s general condition is excellent and the transplant looks normal,” said a statement issued Wednesday from the hospital in the northern city of Amiens, where the operation took place. Dubernard confirmed that the surgery involved the nose, lips and chin.
“We still don’t know when the patient will get out,” he said.
The woman was “severely disfigured” by a dog bite in May that made it difficult for her to speak and chew, according to a joint statement from the hospital in Amiens and another in the southern city of Lyon where Dubernard works.
Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.
Scientists in China have performed scalp and ear transplants, but experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant. In 2000, Dubernard did the world’s first double forearm transplant.
The double-forearm recipient, Denis Chatelier from France, said in 2003 that he had regained “normal usage” of his hands and was even able to shave himself. His forearms were severed in a model rocket accident.
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