Surgeons in France have performed the world's first face transplant, on a 38-year-old woman whose nose and lips had been torn off by a dog. The complex, high-risk operation, which involved grafting on a triangle of facial material from a deceased donor, was carried out over Sunday and Monday at the University Hospital in Amiens, the hospital said in a statement on Wednesday.
It said the team of doctors for "the first partial face transplant" was led by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, who performed the world's first hand transplant at Lyon's Edouard Herriot hospital in 1998, and Professor Bernard Devauchelle, head of maxillo-facial surgery at the Amiens hospital in northern France.
The French team took the surgical world by surprise. Many had expected the first face transplant to take place in the US, after an announcement in the summer that Cleveland clinic in Ohio had finally got ethical approval and was about to start interviewing prospective patients.
But on Wednesday, Michael Earley, specialist plastic surgeon and a member of the [London] Royal College of Surgeons' working party on facial transplantation, said that it was an operation waiting to happen.
"It could have been done anywhere where there are trained microsurgeons and plastic surgeons -- China, Australia or other countries -- from a technical point of view. What has been holding it back are ethical issues."
A team at the Royal Free hospital in London, under Professor Peter Butler, has done extensive work modelling what a transplanted face would look like -- neither like donor nor recipient -- and carrying out psychological studies.
But, said Mr Earley, the ethical climate, in the UK at any rate, was not right.
"I think there would be a number of objections to it from experts in ethics and psychologists and the general public," he said.
There were long-term risks of rejection, which would leave the patient worse off than before. They would also have to take immuno-suppressant drugs for life.
These risks had to be balanced against the benefit the patient would receive. Inevitably, patients hoped for a better result than they might get.
Nobody yet knew whether a transplanted face would look more natural than reconstructive plastic surgery. The mobility of the new face would be in question.
"Your brain moves your face in a particular way. It would still try to move the transplanted face in the same way," said Earley.
"A better looking face would be the object, but it seems likely that the face would still not move in the normal way."
Neither French surgeon was available for comment yesterday. But Professor Dubernard told Le Point magazine that he would give a full account of the groundbreaking operation "with the whole team, and with the patient's agreement, when the time is right to do so."
Le Point said relatives had given permission for the mouth-nose triangle of skin, subcutaneous tissue, facial muscles and veins to be removed from the donor on Sunday morning at a hospital in nearby Lille, shortly after she was declared brain dead.
The operation then had to take place within 24 hours.
The unidentified recipient, who was savaged by a dog last May, had been awaiting a suitable donor since August, when French health authorities finally allowed her name to be added to a list of patients for reconstructive surgery.
She has now reportedly been transferred to another nearby hospital for further intensive treatment, including immuno-suppressant and anti-rejection drugs that she will have to continue taking for life.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS