World's first full-face transplant carried out in Spain

 

 

By Mail Foreign Service

Last updated at 6:54 PM on 22nd April 2010

 

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British experts today welcomed the news that a team in Spain has performed the world's first full face transplant.

More than 30 medics carried out the operation at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron University Hospital on a young man who was injured in an accident five years ago.

The patient was unable to breathe, swallow or speak properly before the transplant and was dependent on artificial equipment to breathe and eat.

 

World first: A team at Spain's Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron University Hospital has performed a full-face transplant

 

He received new facial muscles, skin, nose, lips, jaw, teeth, palate and cheekbones in the 24-hour operation, which was performed on March 20.

In a statement, the hospital said: 'He had been operated on nine times without satisfactory success, therefore he was considered for full face transplant.

'The operation was carried out by a multidisciplinary team led by Dr Joan Pere Barret, performing the transplant of the entire facial skin and muscles, nose, lips, maxilla, palate, all teeth, cheekbones, and the mandible by means of plastic surgery and micro-neurovascular reconstructive surgery techniques.

'This is the first full face transplant performed worldwide, as the 10 operations performed previously had been only partial'

In the first part of the operation, the soft parts of the face, including veins and arteries, were extracted before firmer tissue was removed.

Great achievement: British plastic surgeon Peter Butler has a British team ready to carry out a full-face transplant

 

The man's arteries and veins were then isolated and the donor's face checked to ensure there was a complete flow of blood.

The final part of the surgery involved transplanting bones and connecting nerves to the new face.

The recipient will stay in hospital for observation for two months, followed by four months of regular check-ups.

 

Professor Peter Butler, head of the UK's Facial Transplantation Research Team, has been ready to perform a full face transplant for several months.

His team, based at the Royal Free Hospital in North London, is understood to still be looking for donors that provide an exact match for several British patients.

Prof Butler said: 'We congratulate Dr Barret and his transplantation team in Spain on what may well be the most complex facial transplantation operation carried out so far worldwide.

'Secondly I would like to wish the patient well for the future.

'We must also remember the family of the donor who, we understand, has helped not only the facial transplantation patient, but others, with various forms of organ donation. To help others, not only to live but to have a good life, is a supreme act of human generosity.

'This operation once again shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people, for whom reconstructive surgery has not worked and for whom the quality of life is indescribably poor.

'These are people who live a terrible twilight life, mostly shut away and hiding from public gaze.'

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1268104/Worlds-face-transplant-carried-Spain.html#ixzz0lrH4c3Qf

That lady that that chimp attacked should get this :thinking: