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World's 1st face, hands transplant patient dies

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-16 08:28

PARIS: A Frenchman who underwent the world's first face and double-hand transplant in April after being horribly disfigured in an accident has died, hospital officials said Monday.

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The 30-year-old man died of cardiac arrest while undergoing a follow-up operation on June 8, according to Laurent Lantieri, the surgeon who performed the groundbreaking transplant near Paris.

"He developed a facial infection a few weeks after his operation, and during an operation to try to tackle the infection he suffered cardiac arrest," Lantieri told RTL radio.

Lantieri said the patient's death was linked to a heart problem, not to the transplant itself.

"Developing an infection is a common phenomenon among transplant patients," he said. "All the biopsies we performed showed there was absolutely no rejection. Neither was it a vascular problem."

Surgeons had replaced the patient's entire face above the lips, including the scalp, nose, ears and forehead, in a 30-hour operation involving a medical team of more than 40.

The recipient, on a donor waiting list for more than a year, had burn scars to the face and hands so severe that it had robbed him of all social life.

The French biomedical agency, which oversees transplants in the country, issued a statement saying the operation was inevitable considering the scale of the patient's injuries.

"This transplant was the only way to reduce his functional and aesthetic handicap," it said.

The man had expressed satisfaction upon seeing his new face and hands before he died, the statement said.

"Every measure had been taken to insure the patient was very clearly and fully informed about the surgery, about its inherent risks and the constraints," the agency added.

It added that the results of the face or arm transplants carried out in France over the past decade were "encouraging," with one death and one amputation among a total of nine recipients.

Worldwide, there have been five other face transplants, three of them in France, but it was the first time a transplant of both hands and the face had been completed in one go. The first successful face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog.

AP- AFP