LYON, France - Doctors in France said they had performed the world’s first partial face transplant, forging the way into a risky medical frontier by operating on a woman disfigured by a dog bite.
The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and chin grafted onto her face from a brain-dead donor whose family gave consent. The operation, performed Sunday, was led by a surgeon already famous for a transplant breakthrough, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard.
Dubernard would not discuss the surgery, but confirmed that it involved the nose, lips and chin.
Doctors who gave a French woman the world’s first partial face transplant did not try normal reconstructive surgery first, violating the advice of a French government ethics panel.
Doctor and professor to some, politician to others, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who has just helped perform the world's first partial face transplant, is Max to friends _ nicknamed for always going to the maximum.
Dubernard's name is associated with a series of medical "firsts," but he may be better known here as a lawmaker representing the Rhone region around the southeastern city of Lyon, where he was born.
When I heard this news, I thought of plastic surgery. If plastic surgery weren't an option, someone else's face certainly wouldn't be my first suggestion. A face is firstly someone's identity, they grew into that face. Not even as a last resort would I think of sewing someone else's face where mine belongs, not matter that I was chewed by a dog. Be sure that I wouldn't have left the dog wanting more!
Just wondering what some of your thoughts on this might be.
