Face Transplant Recipient Goes Home

A Chinese farmer who received a partial face transplant after being mauled by a black bear has been discharged from the hospital and will go back to his rural mountain village, state media reported Saturday.

Li Guoxing, 30, who underwent surgery in April in Xijing Hospital in the central Chinese city of Xian, thanked the doctors and nurses after being released Friday and said he was happy to go home, the official New China News Agency said.

Before, “I could not eat, drink or smile like an ordinary person,” he said at a news conference. “Now I am starting to act like an ordinary person. It feels great.”

The state-run Beijing Youth Daily ran a photo of Li arriving in Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, and holding a bouquet of flowers as people welcomed him. His face appeared swollen and stitches were still visible.

“When he took a train to Xian for his operation, he had to wear a mask,” the newspaper said. “Now he’s full of confidence and greeted everyone at the exit door of the airport for 20 minutes.”

The hospital, run by the People’s Liberation Army, said it was only the second time the complex procedure had been attempted anywhere in the world. Last year, doctors in Amiens, France, performed what was apparently the world’s first such procedure, transplanting lips, a chin and a nose onto a woman who had been mauled by her dog.

Two doctors were accompanying Li back to his home in a poor, mountainous village in Yunnan, the news agency said.

He will spend a week with his wife and two children before going back to the hospital for more treatment because his hometown does not have adequate medical facilities, it said.

Li lost almost the whole right side of his face in 2003 after a black bear mauled him when he tried to chase it away from his cows with a stick.

In a 15-hour procedure on April 14, a team of 15 doctors and three nurses gave him a nose, upper lip, cheek and eyebrow from a brain-dead donor.

Since then, Li has been doing well and the swelling in his face has gone down, Guo Shuzhong, director of the hospital’s plastic surgery department, was quoted as saying by the New China News Agency.

Li now has some facial hair and acne -- signs that the transplant has been successful and the skin is alive, Guo said.

He probably will undergo more surgery in the coming weeks “to make the right part of his face, his lips and eyes seem more natural,” Guo said.

Li, who speaks the dialect of his Lisu ethnic minority group, was mostly quiet during a brief appearance for reporters in Kunming.

Because the muscles of his face were still healing, he remained expressionless.