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Merci, first face transplant patient writes
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-03 14:51
LYON, France - As she held the mirror up to her new face, the woman looked at
her reflection. She paused for a moment. Unable to speak because of the
breathing tube in her throat, she wrote a note, "Merci." Thank you.
Then, she cried. Dr. Sylvie Testelin, one of her surgeons, cried too.
An unidentified woman, bottom, right, is
examined by a surgeon, who confers with other hospital staff, part seen,
in his image from video released by the Amiens hospital in France December
2, 2005. Doctors at the Amiens hospital on Friday, Dec. 2, 2005, said the
woman was the recipient on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005, of the world's first
partial face transplant. The 38-year-old woman, whose identity has not
been disclosed, was mauled by a dog in May, leaving her with severe facial
injuries that her doctors said made it difficult for her to speak and eat.
The donor was a brain dead woman. [AP] | The
results of the daring nose, lips and chin transplant ¡ª the first ever attempted
¡ª were beyond what the doctors had hoped for. The new face bore an uncanny
resemblance to her former face, one doctor said.
At their first news conference since Sunday's surgery in northern France,
doctors on Friday described the 15-hour operation and the woman's reaction to
her new face.
The 38-year-old divorced mother, who doesn't want her identity known, had
been mauled in June by her dog, a Labrador retriever mix adopted from a rescue
shelter. The lower half of her face had been ripped off.
Before the operation, the woman couldn't chew her food. She had trouble
speaking. Whenever she tried to drink something, most of the liquid dribbled
from her mouth. She would only go out in public wearing a surgical mask to
protect her from stares.
Conventional reconstructive surgery may have been possible, but it would have
been very difficult, if not impossible, to restore not only her appearance, but
also basic functions, her doctors said Friday.
Several expert advisers agreed that traditional surgery involving skin and
muscle grafts from elsewhere on the woman's own body was not a viable solution,
the doctors said.
Leading transplant surgeon Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard acknowledged that he
initially had reservations. But he added that when he saw the extent of the
woman's disfigurement, "I no longer hesitated for a second."
"If we didn't perform this operation, her outcome would have been quite poor.
She would have had to undergo four, maybe five conventional surgeries over a
long period of time, with uncertain results," said another of her surgeons Dr.
Benoit Lengele, of the Saint-Luc University Clinic in Brussels, Belgium. "We
wanted to try to restore her as best as possible and as quickly as possible. We
truly believe from the human standpoint and the scientific point of view that
the solution we took was the best one."
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