09 July 2010
Paris, France
Full frontal: French surgeon Laurent Lantieri carried out the 12-hour operationThe head surgeon, Laurent Lantieri, described the surgery as a world first because it included a difficult and unprecedented transplant of tear ducts and eyelids. A similar procedure carried out in Spain earlier this year replaced most of the face, but not the tear ducts.
The latest patient, identified only as Jerome, “is doing well, ”Lantieri said, adding the 12–hour procedure was carried out on June 27 at Henri Mondor hospital in the Paris suburb of Creteil.
Lantieri claimed it was the first of its kind involving so many different parts of the face. The hospital said the operation was the 12th face transplant worldwide since the first conducted in France in 2005, on the nose, mouth and chin of a woman disfigured by a dog attack. Such operations remain quite rare and complex, though they have gained acceptance in recent years.
A team of surgeons at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, said they carried out the world’s first full–face transplant in April on a farmer unable to breathe or eat on his own since accidentally shooting himself in the face. Doctors lifted the jaw, nose, cheekbones, muscles, teeth and eyelids from a donor and placed it masklike onto the man. AP
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