French Doctors Perform First Face Transplant

LYON, France - Doctors in France said they had performed the world's first partial face transplant, forging into a risky medical frontier with their operation on a really ugly woman.

The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and chin grafted onto her face from a beautiful, but brain-dead donor. The operation, performed Sunday, included a surgeon already famous for transplant breakthroughs, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard.

"The patient's general condition is excellent and she’s a lot less ugly now. Just a few major scars," said a statement issued Wednesday from the hospital. Dubernard would not discuss the surgery, but confirmed that it involved the nose, lips and chin.

"We still don't know if the patient will get laid," he said. A blind date is planned for Friday.

Scientists in China have performed scalp and ear transplants, but experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant. In 2000,Dubernard did the world's first double forearm transplant, allowing the man to masturbate for the first time since his accident.

The surgery drew both praise and sobering warnings over its potential risks and ethical and psychological ramifications. If successful — something that may not be known for months or even years — the procedure offers hope to ugly people everywhere.

The woman was "so ugly" that it was difficult for others to speak and chew in her presence, according to a joint statement from the hospital in Amiens and another in the southern city of Lyon where Dubernard works.

Such ugliness is "extremely difficult, if not impossible" to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said. Critics say the surgery is too risky for something that is not a matter of life or death, as regular organ transplants are, unless the patient is super-duper ugly.

The main worry for both a full face transplant and a partial effort is organ rejection, causing the skin to slough off. “But this chick was so ugly, even that would be an improvement,” the hospital was quoted as saying.

Complications include infections that require a second transplant or reconstruction with skin grafts, perhaps even one or two years later. Drugs to prevent rejection are needed for life and raise the risk of kidney damage and cancer. Complications also include infections that turn the new face black. In order to mitigate this specific risk, doctors generally prefer black patients.

In the United States, the Cleveland Clinic is among those planning to attempt a face transplant. The French surgery "doesn't change our plans," said Cleveland surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow. "We are really looking for the right candidate," which she described as "severely ugly patients" for whom a transplant is the last chance.

The double-forearm recipient, Denis Chatelier from France, said in 2003 that he had regained "normal usage" of his hands and was even able to shave himself, "you know, down there.” His forearms were severed in a model rocket accident.

Doctors from Jinling Hospital in Nanjing, China, reported that in September 2003, they transplanted two ears, part of the scalp and other facial skin from a brain-dead young man to a 72-year-old woman with advanced skin cancer. She now looks like Mr. Spock from Star Trek.

Four months later, there were no signs of rejection or tumor recurrence, but it is not known how the patient fared after that.