PARIS (AP) — French doctors announced Tuesday that they had performed the world's third partial face transplant on a man whose face was disfigured by severe tumors, giving him a new nose, mouth and chin and replacing part of his cheeks.
Going into the 15-hour operation Sunday, the 29-year-old patient had such large, heavy tumors on his lips that it was difficult to speak or eat. The operation removed most of the tumors from his face, doctors said.
"The patient is doing well from a surgical point of view," chief surgeon Dr. Laurent Lantieri said at a news conference in Paris.
Still, he added, "We will have to wait many months for the results" — including whether the patient's body would accept the tissue, whether his new nerves would function correctly and whether he would psychologically accept his new face.
The patient suffered from a genetic condition known as neurofibromatosis, which causes tumors to grow on nerve tissue throughout the body, the doctors said. The patient had undergone some 30 to 40 operations over 10 years to try to improve his face's appearance, Lantieri said.
Jean-Paul Meningaud, another member of the medical team, said the patient's condition made him increasingly reclusive.
"Any day, all of us can go into a restaurant or have a coffee in a cafe, and he had reached a point where he could not do that," Meningaud said. Doctors said one of the patient's main sources of suffering was that he could not get a job because of his appearance, though he has a university education.
Despite the lifelong risks that a transplant surgery poses — episodes of rejection or even death — the patient "didn't hesitate a single second," Lantieri said, adding that the patient was "completely serene" going into the surgery. New tumors cannot grow on the transplanted tissue, he said.
Lantieri carried out the operation at Henri-Mondor hospital in the Paris suburb of Creteil. The patient remained sedated Tuesday, and still had not seen a picture of himself. The doctor did not release any information about the patient or the donor, seeking to protect their privacy.
In 2005, Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire received the world's first partial face transplant after her dog mauled her. Since that surgery, a Chinese farmer also received a partial face transplant after he was disfigured in a bear attack.
The latest procedure is different because the patient was disfigured by a genetic condition, not an accident.
Lantieri, an adviser to the French medical ethics panel, had criticized the first partial face transplant, saying Dinoire's surgeons should first have tried reconstructive surgery.
Dinoire also underwent a second experimental treatment along with her transplant — an infusion of the donor's bone marrow — to try to prevent rejection of the new tissue. Lantieri said he did not use that tactic in the new surgery.
On the anniversary of Dinoire's procedure in November, doctors said her operation was a success and that she is gaining more sensitivity and facial mobility.
Changing Faces, a British charity for people with disfigurements, said it believes patients can choose to undergo such radical procedures if they are fully informed about the risks, especially of tissue rejection.
"We wish this man well and hope that his privacy and that of the donor's family will be respected," said James Partridge, the group's founder and chief executive. "We hope that the clinical and surgical teams in France will be learning from these procedures and disseminating their findings within the scientific community.
Doctors in Britain and the United States are also working toward similar procedures.
In October, an ethics panel approved plans by surgeons at the Royal Free Hospital in London to carry out what could be the world's first full-face transplant, though it said no patients had been selected yet. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio is also working on plans for full-face transplants.
