Face transplant

Beneficiaries of face transplant
People with faces disfigured by trauma, burns, disease, or birth defects might benefit from the procedure.[1]

The alternative to a face transplant is to move the patient's own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs to their face in a series of as many as 50 operations to regain even limited function and a face that is often likened to a mask or a living quilt.

L. Scott Levin MD FACS, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn Medicine, has described the procedure as "the single most important area of reconstructive research."

[edit] History
[edit] Self as donor ("face replant")
The world's first full-face replant operation was on nine year-old Sandeep Kaur, whose face was ripped off when her hair was caught in a thresher. Sandeep's mother witnessed the accident. Sandeep arrived at the hospital unconscious with her face in two pieces in a plastic bag. An article in the The Guardian recounts: "In 1994, a nine-year-old child in northern India lost her face and scalp in a threshing machine accident. Her parents raced to the hospital with her face in a plastic bag and a surgeon managed to reconnect the arteries and replant the skin."[2] The operation was successful, although the child was left with some muscle damage as well as scarring around the perimeter where the facial skin was sutured back on. Sandeep's doctor was Abraham Thomas, one of India's top microsurgeons. In 2004, Sandeep was training to be a nurse.[3]

In 1997, a similar operation was performed in the Australian state of Victoria, when a woman's face and scalp, torn off in a similar accident, was packed in ice and successfully reattached.[4]

[edit] Partial face transplant
The world's first partial face transplant on a living human was carried out on 27 November 2005[5][6] by Dr Bernard Devauchelle, a plastic and microsurgeon, and Dr Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Isabelle Dinoire[5] underwent surgery to replace her original face that had been ravaged by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead human's nose and mouth was grafted onto the patient. On 13 December 2007, the first detailed report of the progress of this transplant after 18 months was released in the New England Journal of Medicine and documents that the patient is happy with the results but also that the journey has been very difficult, especially with respect to her immune system's response.[7][8]

In April 2006, the Xijing military hospital in Xian, China carried out a similar operation, transplanting the cheek, upper lip, and nose of Li Guoxing, who was mauled by an Asiatic black bear while protecting his sheep.[9][10].

On 21 December 2008 it was reported that Li Guoxing had died in July in his home village in Yunnan Province. Prior to his death, a documentary on the Discovery Channel showed he had stopped taking immuno-suppressant drugs in favor of herbal medication.This was suggested to be a contributing factor to his death by his surgeon, Dr Guo Shuzhong.

A 29-year-old French man underwent surgery in 2007. He had a facial tumor called a neurofibroma caused by a genetic disorder. The tumor was so massive that the man could not eat or speak properly.

In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after he received what his doctors call the world's first successful full face transplant.[11][12]

[edit] Full face transplant
On 20 March 2010, a team of 30 Spanish doctors carried out the first full face transplant on a man injured in a shooting accident