UK team hails the first ever full-face transplant

THE world's first full-face transplant has been carried out in Spain and welcomed by British experts who are ready to replicate the ground-breaking surgery at any time, should a donor be found.

More than 30 medics carried out the operation at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron University Hospital on a young man who was injured in an accident five years ago.

The patient was unable to breathe, swallow or speak properly before the transplant and was dependent on artificial equipment to breathe and eat.

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He received new facial muscles, skin, nose, lips, jaw, teeth, palate and cheekbones in the 24-hour operation, which was performed on March 20.

In a statement, the Barcelona hospital said: "He had been operated on nine times without satisfactory success, therefore he was considered for full face transplant.

"The operation was carried out by a multidisciplinary team led by Dr Joan Pere Barret, performing the transplant of the entire facial skin and muscles, nose, lips, maxilla, palate, all teeth, cheekbones, and the mandible by means of plastic surgery and micro-neurovascular reconstructive surgery techniques.

"This is the first full face transplant performed worldwide, as the 10 operations performed previously had been only partial."

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Professor Peter Butler, head of the UK's Facial Transplantation Research Team, welcomed the news having been ready to carry out a full-face transplant for several months.

His team is understood to still be looking for donors that provide an exact match for several British patients.

The team, based at the Royal Free Hospital in North London, has permission to carry out four face transplants.

Prof Butler said: "We congratulate Dr Barret and his transplantation team in Spain on what may well be the most complex facial transplantation operation carried out so far worldwide. Secondly I would like to wish the patient well for the future.

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"We must also remember the family of the donor who, we understand, has helped not only the facial transplantation patient, but others, with various forms of organ donation. To help others, not only to live but to have a good life, is a supreme act of human generosity.

"This operation once again shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people, for whom reconstructive surgery has not worked and for whom the quality of life is indescribably poor."

In the first part of the intricate operation carried out by the Spanish team, the soft parts of the face, including veins and arteries, were extracted before firmer tissue was removed.

The young man's arteries and veins were then isolated and the donor's face checked to ensure there was a complete flow of blood. The final part of the surgery involved transplanting bones and connecting nerves to the new face.

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He will remain in hospital for two months and after leaving he will have to undergo strict medical examinations.

The first face transplant, a partial procedure, was carried out in France in 2005 to replace the nose, lips and chin of 38-year-old Isabelle Dinoire who was mauled by her dog.

Such procedures have since been replicated across the globe but have only been partial transplants.

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