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| | French surgeons successfully carried out a unique transplant on a 38 year old woman's lower portion of the face from a dead donor in the end of November 2005.
Six months earlier to the operation, she tried to commit suicide by consuming sedatives.
Her pet Labrador bit the face of breathless owner, disfigured the face, but woke her from fatal sleep.
Group of surgeons led by Doctor Jean-Michel Dubernard performed operation on Isabella in a clinic in Amiens. The doctors performed first face transplant by grafting a nose, lips, cheeks and chin. The anonymous woman donor was brain dead and was also a suicide case. After few days of operation, the surgeons stated that the operation was a success and Isabella was happy.
After three weeks of surgery (standard time limit for graft rejection of donor tissue), the patient complained about facial erythema and inflammatory changes. Doctors had to administer large doses of steroid hormones and immune suppressive drugs. After several anxious days, it was possible to subdue the rejection.
After one and half month of surgery, Isabelle Dinoire for the first time went out onto the street and moved in a motley crowd and visited a bar. According to doctor Dubernard, none paid attention on her even though fine red scars were visible at the joining places of her recipient skin with donor skin. Doctors assured that the patient could talk reasonably well occasionally having problems while pronouncing the letters "P" & "B". However, other plastic surgeons raised doubts in this information since functions of lost organs could not be restored so quickly and some of the functions (for example: olfaction) cannot be restored at all. However, many specialists consider the success of partial face transplant as major milestone in the development of transplantology.
On second pan of scales – life:
Till date, Isabell must be certainly facing problems with speech and while eating. He doubts whether she could barely eat with lips but has to eat by tilting her head back. But all these problems gradually fade in the background of euphoria, which she has to experience at present. In fact, the surgeons gave back her face and for women, face is a problem of special importance. From technical point of view, surgery is sufficiently tricky. For me and as well as for many colleagues, as usual, the question is of vital importance, which is important: restore the badly damaged face from host tissues of the patient through partial donation by aesthetic side without worsening the quality of patient’s life or achieve external attraction but prescribe immune depressants to the patient thus risking his life. After all, at present, any infection, even common cold can be fatal to Isabelle. It would be better to judge the real results of operation only after three years and still draft rejection still remains an issue of concern.
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