Face transplant woman doing well

Dec 5 2005

French surgeons say that the 38-year-old recipient of the world's first partial face transplant regained consciousness 24 hours after her operation and is doing well.

The patient received a nose, lips and chin from a brain-dead donor after being savaged by a dog.

The woman has apparently thanked them for their work, but the doctors have however been forced to defend their decision to put aside ethical concerns and health risks in carrying out the procedure.

According to Bernard Devauchelle, one of the surgeons who performed the pioneering surgery, her first words were 'thank you'.

There were no post-operative complications and the patient is doing well both physically and psychologically, says Jean-Michel Dubernard, the other specialist who carried out the operation at Amiens in northern France.

The doctors do however say that there are still risks of complications such as the rejection of the tissue and an increased danger of cancer due to the drugs used to prevent the immune system from rejecting the new face.

Although the transplant has given hope to people disfigured by burns or accidents, but it has also raised psychological and ethical issues for the recipient and donor family.

Dubernard says there were many ethical problems, but they hold the philosophy, that as doctors presented with a patient with a very severe disfigurement related to a dog bite, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair the injuries with classical techniques of surgery.

In the operation, the woman received transplanted tissue, muscles, arteries and veins, she apparently had trouble eating and speaking because of her injuries, suffered last May.

Dubernard, a specialist at a hospital in Lyon has also carried out hand transplants, while Devauchelle is from the Amiens hospital.

Unlike heart, liver and kidney transplants, it was not life-saving surgery but the woman chose to have the operation despite the considerable risks.

Carine Camby, the head of the French agency of biomedicine which oversees organ donations, has assured that the operation had not taken priority over other vital organ transplants.