French Doctors Perform Partial Face Transplant

French surgeons said Wednesday that they had performed the world’s first partial face transplant, giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman mauled by a dog.

Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation Sunday on a 38-year-old woman in the northern city of Amiens by grafting on tissue, muscle, arteries and veins from a brain-dead donor.

“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.

The woman, who was not identified, had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her in May.

She has been unable to talk or chew properly.

The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the donor.

The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand and arm transplants, and Bernard Devauchelle from the Amiens hospital.

There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the donor tissue and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.

Experts say that the microsurgery techniques needed for the transplant are well established but that little is known about the psychological impact and the long-term risk of the anti-rejection drugs the woman will have to take.

Peter Butler, a plastic surgeon at Royal Free Hospital in London who has researched face transplants, said that he believed the nose, lips and chin had been transplanted as a complete unit and that the prognosis was probably good.

“The likelihood is that it is not going to change the facial identity very much as long as they have matched for skin tone and texture,” he said.

“Aesthetically it would look pretty good if it heals. The question is how will it work. That is an unknown because we don’t know if they transplanted nerves with it.”