The world's first full-face replant operation was on nine year-old Sandeep Kaur, whose face was ripped off when her hair was caught in a thresher. Sandeep's mother witnessed the accident. Sandeep arrived at the hospital unconscious with her face in two pieces in a plastic bag. An article in the The Guardian recounts: "In 1994, a nine-year-old child in northern India lost her face and scalp in a threshing machine accident. Her parents raced to the hospital with her face in a plastic bag and a surgeon managed to reconnect the arteries and replant the skin." The operation was successful, although the child was left with some muscle damage as well as scarring around the perimeter where the facial skin was sutured back on. Sandeep's doctor was Abraham Thomas, one of India's top microsurgeons. In 2004, Sandeep was training to be a nurse.

In 1997, a similar operation was performed in the Australian state of Victoria, when a woman's face and scalp, torn off in a similar accident, was packed in ice and successfully reattached.

People with faces disfigured by trauma, burns, disease, or birth defects might benefit from the procedure.

The alternative to a face transplant is to move the patient's own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs to their face in a series of as many as 50 operations to regain even limited function and a face that is often likened to a mask or a living quilt.

L. Scott Levin MD FACS, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn Medicine, has described the procedure as "the single most important area of reconstructive research."

The world's first partial face transplant on a living human was carried out on November 27, 2005 by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, a plastic and microsurgeon in Amiens, France. Isabelle Dinoire underwent surgery to replace her original face that had been ravaged by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead human's nose and mouth was grafted onto the patient. On December 13, 2007, the first detailed report of the progress of this transplant after 18 months was released in the New England Journal of Medicine and documents that the patient is happy with the results but also that the journey has been very difficult, especially with respect to her immune system's response.

On 20 March 2010, a team of 30 Spanish doctors carried out the first full face transplant on a man injured in a shooting accident.

CLEVELAND, April 24 (UPI) -- The doctor in charge of the first face transplant in the United States says he does not believe a "full face transplant" will ever be done.

Dr. Maria Siemionow told ABC News the Spanish surgical team that performed a "full face transplant" in the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona appears to have made advances over previous surgeries, including transplanting teeth and a lower jaw. But she disputed the terminology used in an announcement Thursday of the operation last month.

"For someone to have no face at all -- they would not survive to start with," Siemionow said.

The first face transplant was done in France on a woman who had been mauled by a pet dog. Siemionow was in charge at the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 when a woman -- maimed when her husband shot her in the face - received a transplant.

Thirty doctors were part of the surgery that occurred in late March.

The patient had undergone nine failed operations before being considered for the transplant.

The medical team's leader, Joan Pere Barret, told reporters that the patient was satisfied when he saw his new appearance. He has scars on his forehead and neck, but they will be concealed in the future, Barret said.

"'The patient asked to see himself one week after the surgery, and he reacted very calmly and with satisfaction, and when we asked him -- in writing, because we communicate with writing and gestures -- he said he was very grateful and satisfied," Barret said.

Although this is the first total face transplant, there have been partial face transplants in France, the United States, China and Spain.

The first was when doctors operated on Isabelle Dinoire in Amiens, France, in 2005. She had been mauled by her dog.

In 2008, the United States had its first-ever near-total face transplant.





Tags: Face Transplant