The World's First Full Face Transplant

Dave Knott writes "A thirty-member Spanish medical team has achieved the world's first full face transplant. There have been ten previous similar operations, but this is claimed to be the first total transplant, replacing all of the face including some bones. The unnamed recipient originally injured himself in a shooting accident, and received the entire facial skin and muscles — including cheekbones, nose, lips and teeth — of a donor. The complex operation involved extraction of the donor's face, followed by removal of the jaw, nose, cheeks and parts of the eye cavities. Then the medical team took all of the donor face's soft tissue, including musculature, veins and nerves. In order to transplant the face, the medical team has to connect four jugular veins, extract bones and join all the musculature and blood vessels. The recipient has had a chance to see himself in the mirror, and is reportedly satisfied with the results. It is unknown whether he now looks more like John Travolta or Nicolas Cage." The pictures and videos in the linked articles are all computer-generated at this point, so the squeamish need not worry.

Comments

The Results?

[hags2k]

I would be interested to see before/after pictures of the recipient.

Re:The Results?

[maxwell demon]

And the before picture of the donor (I don't think I want to see the after picture there).

Re:The Results?

[Undead Waffle]

I don't think that would sit well.

The donor?

[urusan]

Where did they get a spare face? Faces are rather hard to come by.

Re:The donor?

[spun]

A donor, it said. Pay attention. Where do you think they get organs and shit for transplants? Dead people with donor cards.

Uh, who could possibly need a shit transplant?

Re:The donor?

[Pointy McButterpants]

Uh, who could possibly need a shit transplant?

Actually.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy

Re:The donor?

[spun]

Whoa. I learn something new and disgusting every day. Thanks Internet!

Re:The donor?

[spun]

Okay, now this is more along the lines of what I was trying to set up. See, I provide the funny lead in, someone else makes the punch line. But a big 'thanks!' to all those corny, nutty folks who felt compelled to let us all know that, yes, there really is such a thing as a shit transplant. I'm sure we all feel relieved knowing that, as if a big load has dropped off our, uh, shoulders. Lets all try to do our duty and keep each other informed. But this thing is getting pretty long now, and I feel pooped.

Re:The donor?

[jdoverholt]

I'm only slightly surprised that such a transplant exists, but why are so many Slashdotters so familiar with it?

Injured his face in a shooting accident ?

[unity100]

it seems that dick cheney is still about.

Damn it, Dick!

[Anonymous Coward]

The unnamed recipient originally injured himself in a shooting accident...

Dick Cheney needs to stop shooting his friends in the face.

How on Earth does he even get friends in the first place?

Re:Damn it, Dick!

[Locke2005]

This was always my reaction to Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. Every week for 12 years, one of her closest friends would get knocked off, and she would have to step in and solve the murder. And yet she still had friends! You'd think after a while people would figure out that being her friend was hazardous to their health, wouldn't you? Personally, I would have suspected she was offing them herself and framing other people for it pretty early on.

So, what exactly do you think the reaction down at the country club is like when Cheney rolls in and asks, "Hey! Anybody wanna go huntin'?"

Now it's a medical procedure...

[Cruciform]

Just wait until this becomes a cosmetic procedure for the rich. A few years of refinement and advances in microsurgery, and then they'll be raising clones of rich people in jungle compounds down in Brazil...

Re:Now it's a medical procedure...

[maxume]

Right, because anti-rejection drugs and a face full of nerve damage are waaaaay better than a few wrinkles.

Here you go

[spun]

I think this is what you're looking for.

Simply astounding!

[JDSalinger]

Despite it being 2010, it remains popular to attack science and medicine as though they do not have a significant mastery of reality or how the body works. Achievements like this demonstrate that the human body is not only understandable, but that it can be highly manipulated and changed with life-changing degrees of success.

For all the people who claim that our medical knowledge is seriously lacking or fraught with error, this fly's in your face. Prepare for an onslaught of biomedical advances that will change everything we know about health and longevity. While the human body may seem to work like black magic, perhaps like an infinitely complex analog circuit, advances in understanding are steadily being made. There are real achievers in these domains and they are standing on the shoulders of giants, accruing the tools to solve any physiological problem.

Re:Simply astounding!

[prestonmichaelh]

Although I agree with you in general, I think people tend to go too much to extremes on both sides of this issue. Yes, we know a lot about the human body, how it works, and we know how to do a lot of stuff to it, but there is still tons of stuff we don't know.

Even some of the stuff/treatments that we do "know" we don't really know what we are doing. As a real life example, I take generic Flonase for allergies. It is basically a steroid that you shoot in your nose. It works great and I am glad that someone figured out that it helps allergies.

One day, I decided to read the long, wordy leaflet that comes with the prescription (don't ask me why). Here is a direct qoute from the leaflet:

The precise mechanism through which fluticasone propionate affects allergic rhinitis symptoms is not known.

Here is the complete leaflet in PDF form if you are interested: http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_flonase.pdf

If you go on to read it all, basically, in fancy doctor terms, it says that through trials they found out that this stuff works for a majority of people at the recommendend dose, but they really don't know why. They also don't know if it will work long term. And this is just a steroid for allergies.

Again, I think the advances in medicine are great, but we shouldn't overrate them. I knew a guy a few years back who basically "knew" that in his lifetime (he was around 35 at the time, probably about 40 now) that we would have the medical techonolgy to live for ever. We would be able to either "reverse the aging process" and stop cells from dying, or at minimum, implant our consciousness in a robot of some sort. Anyway, it is good to keep in mind that a lot of medicine is still, in many cases, a lot of trial and error.

I saw that movie

[Monkeedude1212]

Whats it called again? The one with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta... Where they like, take the guys face off, and then his face is off, so then they take the other guys face off, and put it on the other guys face. And then the guy without a face is really put off by it, so he gets the doctor to take the first offed face and put it back on him. So their faces are swapped. And then they have an epic face off with a climactic finish.

God I wish I could just remember the name of that movie...

Re:I saw that movie

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was called "The Face That Couldn't Stay On."

Re:I saw that movie

[roman_mir]

Thank you, captain obvious and humorless, I salute you and award you the Redundant Cross of Missing The Point.

Why would you need one?

[snarfies]

It begs the question: What's wrong with your faaaaaaace?

Let me get this straight

[goffster]

A 30 member medical team is willing to reconstruct the face of someone who
blew his own face off. I wonder how much that cost?

I wonder how much it costs to vaccinate a single child
against yellow fever ?

Re:Let me get this straight

[east coast]

While I get your point in all of this there is also the fact that the research value of this is well worth their time too.

Re:Let me get this straight

[MrMista_B]

Hey, you know this computer you're using to post to Slashdot?

Yeah, I wonder how much it costs to vaccinate a single child, indeed, hypocrite.

Re:Let me get this straight

[roman_mir]

Hold on, you have just spent time reading about this on /. and commenting, but you could have been outside, helping the needy!

Re:Let me get this straight

[izomiac]

Yep, it's a real shame those surgeons don't spend more time fixing the world's political problems. I mean, why develop or pay for costly procedures, it's not cost effective at all! For the price of a single patient on NovoSeven we could save many thousands from malaria. Aborting a single high-risk pregnancy could save enough money to pay for proper prenatal care for dozens of low income women. Allowing a single child to die of leukemia rather than perform a costly bone marrow transplant could put every one of his classmates through college.

One benefit of being wealthy (as an individual or as a nation) is the ability to afford nice things. Since wealth isn't uniformly distributed, some people can afford such things while others cannot. As a wealthy nation we do fund quite a bit of foreign aid and public health initiatives in our own country. The cheap ideas that have a lot of measurable benefit are done unless there's a non economic/medical reason that prevents it. An example of which is that we spend more money on our own country's citizens than on another country's citizens due to a sense of responsibility and a respect for the other nation's autonomy. Another is that poor nations often have political issues that prevent cheap vaccines from being distributed.

My understanding is that this procedure was developed for burn patients and similar. They undergo hundreds of procedures and are still left looking quite abnormal. The social implications are tremendous, as are the alterations to their sense of identity. This procedure could dramatically improve their quality of life.

Full disclosure: my university has been working on this procedure for several years and have basically decided that they don't want to be the first. Apparently they're worried that the risk of rejection is too high, and if the face is rejected, what then? OTOH, I got all my info from one of the ethicists on the IRB, and not one of the core researchers. There are probably other reasons to not proceed despite allegedly being technically capable and ready for about 5 years now.

Hint: never lend someone the money for this op.

[petes_PoV]

as you won't recognise them afterwards to get it back.

Re:Yeah but what does the donor look like?

[hldn]

What does the donor look like now, and what are they going to do about not having a face?

he's going to get a face from another donor. duh.

Another First Until The Next

[DynaSoar]

The last first was first until this first came along and included *some* bones.
This first will be the first until the next first included more bones.
I think they're on to something here. Not only have they found a way to generate repeating headliners, they can do so farther and farther by redefining 'face'.

'Researchers today performed the first really really for real face transplant. The previous first removed enough skin from the front side of the person so that their navel was pulled upwards to serve as a third nostril. In this record shattering surgery, the skin was pulled even farther upwards, so that now her pubic hair serves as a beard. According to Dr. Rob Zombie they have yet to solve the problem of the patient urinating onto her dinner plate from her chin. "We tried a diaper, but then she couldn't breathe." Dr. John Carpenter stated "We don't expect to have the problems that we previously with this patient, specifically her negative reaction to having three nostrils. This time we're 'replanted' [their term for transplants performed on the same person but involving different locations] most of the old evolutionary hold-overs that were previously user to define 'face'. We find it highly unlikely the patient will state objections to having a beard on her face if she can't see in a mirror. We moved her eyes around back to make room for the beard." Dr. Zombie added "And if she does, so what? If we don't want to listen to her, we've moved her mouth too. We'll just make her sit down. It wasn't strictly necessary to move her mouth that far, but we had to do something. It was impossible to work with all that screaming going on."

Re:Yeah but what does the donor look like?

[MaskedSlacker]

Is this the Bernie Madoff Organ Donation Agency by any chance?