Patient Shows New Face to Media

The Frenchwoman who received the world’s first partial face transplant showed off her new features Monday, and her scar: a faint, circular line of buckled skin around her nose, lips and chin.

Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old mother of two, spoke with a heavy slur and had trouble moving her lips at her first news conference since the November surgery to replace features lost in a dog attack. But she said she looked forward to resuming a normal life.

“Since the day of my operation, I have a face like everyone else,” Dinoire said, reading from a prepared statement.

She also thanked the family of the female donor, who gave Dinoire new lips, a chin and a nose and distributed a heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys to other people. “Thanks to them, a door to the future is opening for me and others,” Dinoire said.

Before the 15-hour surgery in Amiens on Nov. 27, she wore a surgical mask in public to avoid frightening people.

Still hospitalized for physical therapy, Dinoire said she was regaining sensation and was not in pain. “I can open my mouth and eat. I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth,” she said.

While one of her surgeons was speaking, she drank from a plastic cup -- a simple gesture that produced a flurry of camera flashes.

Her mouth appeared slightly lopsided and was usually open slightly. When she laughed, she seemed unable to bring her lips together to form a full smile. She also had difficulty pronouncing such letters as “b” and “p” that require pursing the lips, a skill her doctors said will improve with time.

In terms of coloring, the match between Dinoire’s own skin and the graft was remarkable, although she wore makeup.

“There’s no comparison between the face I have today and the face I had seven months ago,” she said. “It is totally different.”