Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:35 pm Post subject: Face Transplant Woman
World's first face transplant patient pictured without make-up for first time
13 December 2007
It took 18 months for her smile to come back completely, but doctors say the French woman who received the world's first partial face transplant is now doing well. Isabelle Dinoire, 40, was pictured without makeup for the first time today showing the extent of her scars.
Ms Dinoire had her nose, cheeks, mouth, lips and chin replaced by donor tissue on November 27th, 2005, after they were torn off by her own dog six months earlier. The ground breaking operation made headlines around the world. Her doctors, led by Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon University, said today that Dinoire has recovered slowly and steadily and overcome two episodes of rejection.
"At present, the patient says she is not afraid of walking in the street or meeting people at a party, and she is very satisfied with the aesthetic and functional results," the Dubernard team wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. Her rehabilitation programme included daily psychological counselling for the first month, and regularly after that, as well as a regimen of facial exercises.
At first, because her lips did not move properly, she could not always drink neatly, but that problem cleared up after a year. Sensation to heat and cold was normal at the six-month mark, and she could perceive light touch to her new skin. Dinoire initially had trouble moving her lips properly to pronounce words that contained sounds such as P and B, but that problem also resolved itself over time. Six months after the transplant, she could completely close her lips when she tried.
Photographs that accompany the report show her scars are still visible from the bridge of the nose extending outward to make a broad circle around the mouth, but makeup makes them far less apparent. "The encouraging 18-month outcomes of face transplantation in our patient suggest that this procedure can offer hope for some patients with severe disfigurement," the doctors said. Since Dinoire's surgery, two other people are known to have had face transplants.
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considering how bad the original damage must have been I think she's been really lucky... with the makeup you can hardly notice at all.
There was a thread about this ages ago, but I think it must have been on the old forum.[align=center]
Yeah, we talked about this awhile back. I've been following this. It's just amazing really. It doesn't look as bad as you would think and there are still similar features to her old face.
This is a great step forward for people who have serious face injuries.
Woman in US reveals world's most extensive face transplant Connie Culp, a woman who received the most extensive face transplant performed to date, stepped forward on Tuesday night to show off the results of the work. By Tom Leonard in New York
06 May 2009
Mrs Culp, 46, underwent a groundbreaking 22-hour operation at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio last December to restore a face that had been shattered by a point-blank shotgun wound in 2004. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin remained her own and she was unable to breathe unaided, eat solid food, smell or smile.
A team of surgeons transplanted 80 per cent of the face, including a nose, cheeks, lower eyelids, upper jaw, palate and some bone, all taken from the same unknown dead woman. Her identity was kept secret until Tuesday when she appeared briefly at a press conference at the hospital in Cleveland.
"Well, I guess I'm the one you came to see today," she said. "While I know you all want to focus on me, I think it's more important you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this Christmas present."
The eight doctors who performed the operation, which involved placing the new face over hers like a mask, said she will now be able to drink from a cup, eat solids, smile, smell and breathe through her nose. Her expressions remain somewhat wooden and her speech is not always easily comprehensible. Her square-shaped face droops heavily is bloated, a result of doctors transplanting extra tissue because they thought some of it might be rejected. She will undergo several more minor procedures to remove some of the excess donor skin as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
Dr Maria Seimionow, Mrs Culp's surgeon, said she had "progressed tremendously", adding: "Her chance of getting a very good outcome with minimal side-effects is very high. As you can see we have now a healthy person and happy person. She has reduced dramatically her pain and also she's able to walk on the street without being called names."
She has suffered only one mild rejection episode that was controlled with a single dose of steroid medicines, her doctors said. However, she must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life, but her dosage has been greatly reduced and she needs only a few pills a day.
Mrs Culp, America's first face transplant patient, was shot in the face by her husband in Hopedale, Ohio, before he turned the gun on himself. Thomas Culp, who also survived the apparent murder-suicide attempt, was jailed for seven years. Mrs Culp had been unable to leave home without being taunted before the operation.
No information has been released about the donor or how she died, but her family members were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Mrs Culp, said Dr Siemionow. Mrs Culp told her doctors she just wants to blend back into society. She has a son and a daughter who live near her, and two young grandsons.
Dr Siemionow estimated the operation cost $250,000 to $300,000 (£166,000 to £199,000). She stressed it was less than the $1 million that other surgeons estimate it costs them to treat other severely disfigured people through dozens of separate operations.
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She reminds me of someone who's had a stroke, but if she gets some more movement back then it's a great job.
The idea that people taunted her is quite something though - where I come from you only taunt people who were BORN that way!
Our newspaper today showed her face before the damage and she was a very pretty lady. I can't believe her husband only got 7 years' prison time.
I think she's very brave to go in front of the cameras at this stage. And it's good that this thing gets publicised - it might make people think twice about taunting others based on looks when anyone's face can be damaged in one moment's madness.
Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:06 am Post subject: World's first plastic surgery patient
Pictures of first person to undergo plastic surgery released The images of a wounded First World War soldier who became the first person to undergo plastic surgery have been released in an attempt to trace his family.
The photographs show before, during and after pictures of the ground-breaking medical procedure carried out on sailor Walter Yeo. Walter sustained terrible facial injuries including the loss of upper and lower eyelids while manning the guns aboard HMS Warspite in 1916. In 1917 he was treated by Sir Harold Gillies - the first man to use skin grafts from undamaged areas on the body - and know as 'the father of plastic surgery'.
London-based Gillies opened a specialist ward for the treatment of the facially-wounded at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, Kent. Walter Yeo is thought to be the first patient to benefit from his newly-developed technique - a form of skin grafting called 'tubed pedical'. The young sailor, of Plymouth, Devon, was given new eyelids with a 'mask' of skin grafted across his face and eyes.
Artist Paddy Hartley, 37, has previously used the images in an exhibition and is now attempting to track down Walter's family to find out what happened to him. Paddy, of London, said: "This tragedy catalysed the surgeon to transform the fledgling discipline of plastic surgery. Walter Yeo last went for treatment at the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth 1938, but little else is known about him. It would be interesting to know what happened to him in the years that followed. I'm keen to find out how he and his family coped with the consequences of his injuries and subsequent surgery."
Walter was born in 1890 and after marrying wife Ada was severely injured during the battle of Jutland while manning guns. Records show he was admitted to Sir Harry Gillies' care on August 8, 1917 - just two months after he opened his specialist hospital. Documents show after the procedure Walter, a gunnery warrant officer, was 'improved, but still had severe disfigurement'.
Paddy said: "The First World War was a war dominated by high explosives and heavy artillery. Casualties treated by Sir Harold Gillies included an unprecedented number with horrific facial injuries. Often unable to see, hear, speak, eat or drink, they struggled to re-assimilate back into civilian life."
Gillies is credited with developing new, untried techniques to treat the injuries created by this new kind of war, taking grafts from undamaged areas of flesh. He used tubular 'pedicles' from the forehead, scalp, chest, neck or shoulders but retained a connection to allow blood flow. Paddy has previously used similar images for an exhibition called Faces of Battle at the National Army Museum in London.
The Queen's Hospital, opened in June 1917, provided over 1,000 beds. There Gillies and his colleagues developed many techniques of plastic surgery and carried more than 11,000 operations on over 5,000 men.
World First: Full-Face Transplant Man On Show
July 26, 2010
Lulu Sinclair,
Sky News Online
A Spanish man has appeared before TV cameras after becoming the first person in the world to have a full-face transplant. The man, known only as Oscar, spoke with difficulty as he thanked the family of the person whose face he now has and the doctors at Vall d'Hebron in Madrid where he had the operation in March.
During the 24-hour surgery, doctors lifted an entire face, including jaw, nose, cheekbones, muscles, teeth and eyelids from one person and placed it, mask-like, onto Oscar. The 31-year-old recipient is a farmer who was unable to breathe or eat on his own after accidentally shooting himself in the face five years ago.
He has now been discharged from hospital and will need between a year and 18 months of physical therapy but is expected to regain up to 90% of his facial functions, said the head of the surgical team, Dr Joan Pere Barret. Oscar is now able to drink liquids and eat soft foods, and has been able to speak for the past two months, the hospital revealed.
Doctors also said he has regained the feeling in most of his face and is partly recovering movement of his muscles. One good sign, apparently, was that a week after the operation, he had to be shaved because of beard growth. But he also suffered acute rejection twice - once four weeks after the surgery and again between the second and third months. Both times, the new face was saved with medication, a hospital statement said.
At the news conference, Oscar seemed relaxed as he looked out at reporters with eyes he cannot yet close completely. His sister, who has not been identified to protect the family's privacy, said her brother looks forward to leading a normal life. He is eager to enjoy "little things, like walking down the street without anyone looking at him, or sitting down for a meal with his family. Doing things that all of us do on a normal day", she said.
A French team announced a similar operation earlier this month, saying a 35-year-old man with a genetic disorder has been given an entirely new face, including tear ducts that cry and a chin that sprouts stubble. A partial face transplant was carried out first in France in 2005 and since then around a dozen have taken place, including three in Spain.
Swedish surgeons reattach woman's face using 358 leeches after horrific dog attack
Jessica Satherley
21st September 2011
Swedish surgeons have used hundreds of leeches to help reconstruct a woman’s face that was bitten off during a horrific dog attack. The woman, from the south of the country, had a huge proportion of her face bitten off in the mauling by her own dog, spanning from her upper lip all the way to her eye.
As she was rushed to hospital last month, her relatives who were with her at the time, managed to recover the loose skin and keep it chilled. They quickly arrived at Skane University Hospital in Malmo with the flesh, which was able to be re-attached with the help of 358 leeches.
Specialist surgeon Jens Larsson told Sweden’s English newspaper The Local: ‘She arrived to the emergency room in Malmo in the middle of the night from another Skane hospital.’ Larsson then called another specialist, Stina Klasson, to come in and help her with the operation. ‘The most important thing was to get blood into the torn-off body part, which we managed to do within an hour of the start of the operation’, Klasson said.
The complicated surgery lasted for 15 hours, during which Klasson and Larsson had to repair the unnamed woman’s upper lip, nose and parts of her cheek. During the procedure, the specialists used the leeches to force blood to flow into the damaged skin. The leeches helped re-start circulation through their sucking and blood-thinning fluids. Klasson said: ‘The grower who supplies the hospital with leeches ran out, so more had to be flown in from the UK.’
The doctors said the operation was successful, but the woman will continue to need re-constructive surgery in the future. Larsson said: ‘The results appear to be good. Her whole nose has survived. The patient can breathe, eat and talk.’
Although similar procedures using leeches have been performed around the world, this operation is thought to be the first of its kind in the Nordic region. The patient’s dog was put down after the attack.
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