Face transplant patient returns home after 22 hr procedure

Andem

dev
Mar 24, 2002
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Larnaka
Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic said the nation's first-ever face transplant surgery took 22 hours from start to finish. The identity of the recipient of the donor face remains a mystery.


She can eat pizza. And hamburgers. She can smell perfume, drink coffee from a cup, and purse her lips as if to blow a kiss. Except that one lip is hers, and the other is from a dead woman. She is the nation's first face transplant patient, and on Thursday night, she went home from a Cleveland hospital. "I'm happy about myself," she told her doctors.

"She accepted her new face," said Dr. Maria Siemionow, the Cleveland Clinic reconstructive surgeon who led the historic operation in early December.
The woman's identity has not been revealed, and hospital officials won't say where she went. She and her family have declined requests for an interview.

She suffered a traumatic injury several years ago, the details of which doctors also won't reveal. But it left the woman with no nose, palate, or way to eat or breathe normally. In a 22-hour procedure, 80 percent of her face was replaced with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died.





The marvels of modern medicine. The part about the dead woman's lips is a little creepy though. Imagine being kissed by them!
 

Unforgiven

Force majeure
May 28, 2007
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Amazing that this can be done! I wonder what would happen should there be a chance encounter with someone close to the donor? Especially a loved one.
 

karrie

OogedyBoogedy
Jan 6, 2007
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bliss
Amazing that this can be done! I wonder what would happen should there be a chance encounter with someone close to the donor? Especially a loved one.

A transplanted face never looks the same as it did on the donor. The bone structure is different, and a lot of our recognition is contextual.... where we see them, how the rest of their body looks, their mannerisms. Chances are someone who got the face of your loved one, unless there was a large identifying mark, would go completely unrecognized by you on the street.
 

Praxius

Mass'Debater
Dec 18, 2007
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Halifax, NS & Melbourne, VIC
A transplanted face never looks the same as it did on the donor. The bone structure is different, and a lot of our recognition is contextual.... where we see them, how the rest of their body looks, their mannerisms. Chances are someone who got the face of your loved one, unless there was a large identifying mark, would go completely unrecognized by you on the street.

Kinda throws the whole concept of Face/Off out the window doesn't it?