Face-transplant patient recovers successfully

Not sure whether or not to get a face transplant done. Here is some good news for you. A patient has successfully recovered after she got a transplant done two years earlier.

A French woman, Isabelle Dinoire, has been reported to have been the first person who has successfully undergone skin transplantation and has regained her full skin sensation and control of facial muscles.

Isabelle had lost her lips, cheeks and most of her nose and chin when she was attacked by her pet dog. Now she has gained complete control of her face muscles and does not have any problems with the transplanted skin. The face was taken from a dead donor and was attached like a mask in a 15 hour surgery.

There has been a mixed response amongst experts regarding this development. Some are still skeptical about the lack of psychological follow up of the patient while the others said they were really impressed by the results.

"They proved me wrong," said Peter Butler, of the Royal Free Hospital in London, who is himself involved in organizing a slower-paced effort to transplant faces in England. "Her neuromuscular recovery looks good. She's done extremely well."

The most important concern in the transplant is that the new skin might be rejected by the immune system of the host. If an immune response is mounted against the transplanted organ, then antibodies might attack the organ and destroy it. This can endanger the life of the person and this is the main argument given by the critics who are not in favor of the transplant.

Twice her immune system also mounted violent reactions against the new tissue only within 18 days of the transplant. The immune-suppressing drugs that had to be taken to suppress these reactions had strong side effects and in this case also caused blood problems and kidney failure. Stronger suppression drugs lead to herpes and poxvirus infections.

According to Dr. Maria Siemionow, director of plastic-surgery research at the Cleveland Clinic, there is a need for less toxic anti rejection and immune-suppressant drugs. Still the major concern and the most important consideration is patient’s psychological adjustment to the transplanted face, she added.

Dinoire was given regular psychological treatment during the first four months after her surgery. She learned how to make impressions, eat, drink and pronounce the words. A video showing her progress has been released and shows no signs of stress or depression in the patient.

"They are telling us she is happy, but she has not undergone testing," Siemionow said. "They are giving us the functional results, but it would be very good for us to know the psychological outcome."

Clearly if less toxic drugs are used and an effective way to tackle the immune response is developed, this process can be really useful in future for the patients who have total disfigurement due to an accident or some other reason.