Face Transplant Patient should be 'Pleasant Looking'
By Carole Bianchi Associated Press posted: 30 November 2005 01:08 pm ET
Update: 12:15 p.m. ET Dec. 1:
(AP) The French woman who got the world's first partial face transplant after being maimed by a dog "should turn out to be a pleasant-looking girl,'' said a surgeon familiar with her case. Dr. Earl Owen of Sydney, Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald he supervised the surgeons in France who grafted the nose, lips and chin onto the injured 38-year-old woman on Sunday. The surgery was done in a hospital in Amiens in northern France.
The facial parts were taken from a brain-dead donor whose family gave their consent, according to a statement from French hospitals. Owen said the woman with the new face, whose identity has not been revealed, will look more like herself than the donor, who he said was a woman.
"We expect the bone structure underneath to be a more powerful delineator of what the outcome will be physically than the skin and the nose and the lips,'' Owen told the Morning Herald. "She still has her own eyes, which are a lot of a person's expression ... we'd expect she'd turn out to be a pleasant-looking girl. ''He said she was attacked by her own dog. Owen said a face transplant was the only chance of giving her an acceptable appearance. It will be months, perhaps years, before it's known if the transplant is a success.
Original story:
LYON, France (AP) -- Doctors have performed the world's first partial face transplant, grafting a nose, lips and chin onto a 38-year-old woman disfigured by a dog bite, hospital officials said Wednesday. The surgery was performed Sunday, said a statement from medics at hospitals in Lyon and Amiens. The surgery was performed in Amiens in northern France, but doctors from both hospitals participated. One of the doctors who performed the surgery, Jean-Michel Dubernard, would not discuss the case when contacted by The...