Written by: Angela Charlton
Doctors deem year-old face transplant a success
Paris (AP) – A year after a French woman received the world’s first partial face transplant, doctors say the operation was a success and she is gaining more and more sensitivity and facial mobility.
As British and U.S. doctors work on plans for a first full-face transplant, the medical team at the hospital in Amiens in northern France issued a new photo and a statement Monday, exactly a year after they transplanted the lips, nose and chin of a brain-dead woman onto Isabelle Dinoire.
…Dinoire appears to have better control over her face than she did in February, [after making] her only formal public appearance since the operation. Dinoire’s immune system nearly rejected the transplant twice, the doctor’s statement said, but she was given immuno-depressants that helped overcome the threat.
“The tolerance of the transplant is excellent,” they said. The team has “confirmed the anatomical and functional success of this first partial face transplant.” “Progress, in terms of sensitivity as much as mobility, is being noted month after month,” the doctors said.
Dinoire, 39, was severely disfigured in May 2005 by her pet Labrador.
She continues to have weekly medical consultations, but otherwise she “leads a normal life,” and expects to resume work soon,” the doctor’s statement said.
Dinoire said she initially had trouble speaking, but now “I am understood wherever I go.”
“It’s been a very strange year, but I don’t regret anything,” she said. “I can feel just about everything as I did before. It may be someone else’s face, but when I look in the mirror I see me.”
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