Isabelle Dinoire Face Transplant
Category : Women Beauty, Women Gossip, Women Health
French woman Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old mother of two who received the world’s first partial face transplant revealed her new features to the public Monday, saying in a heavily slurred voice that she now looks “like everyone else” and hopes to resume a normal life. Just one year before, this petite Frenchwoman could never have imagined she would find herself here, facing the flash of cameras, nodding to her doctors, and wearing the world’s first partial face transplant.
Isabelle Dinoire described in her first news conference since November’s surgery how she was disfigured by a dog bite last year, and thanked the family of the donor who gave her new lips, a chin and nose.
In the next few weeks, people with severly disfigured faces will be screened by Dr. Maria Siemionow for a chance for an operation that has neer been done before: a face transplant (reminds you of John Travolta in Face-off, doesn’t it?). Basically, it’s just a skin graft, utilizing skin from a dead cadaver, an excerpt from the AP news report describes the procedure in brief:
Your face will be removed and replaced with one donated from a cadaver, matched for tissue type, age, sex and skin color. Surgery should last 8 to 10 hours; the hospital stay, 10 to 14 days.
Complications could include infections that turn your new face black and require a second transplant or reconstruction with skin grafts. Drugs to prevent rejection will be needed lifelong, and they raise the risk of kidney damage and cancer.
After the transplant you might feel remorse, disappointment, or grief or guilt toward the donor. The clinic will try to shield your identity, but the press likely will discover it.
“Since the day of my operation, I have a face like everyone else,” Dinoire said. “A door to the future is opening. I can open my mouth and eat. I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth,” Dinoire said.
In terms of coloring, the match between Dinoire’s own skin and the graft seemed remarkable, though she also appeared to be wearing foundation makeup and blusher. When she laughed, she was able to slightly lift a corner of her mouth, but appeared unable to bring her lips together to form a full smile. Her lips remained immobile as she talked, like a ventriloquist’s.
Dinoire said she was pursuing physical therapy, and noted she would have to continue taking drugs to stop her body from rejecting the donated tissue. Yet, she said she looked forward to the future and was eager to return home.
“There’s no comparison between the face I have today and the face I had seven months ago, it is totally different,” she said.
Her surgeons defended their decision to go ahead with the untried procedure, saying that they repeatedly warned Dinoire about the risks involved. The doctors said they could not say for sure how long the transplanted tissue might last.
Isabelle has continued smoking – a habit that Dubernard said he hoped she would break, as it can lead to complications.
Dubernard said he was sure she would stop in the weeks or months ahead, but showed understanding for her behavior.
“Put yourself in her place for a second,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily stressful.”
Dinoire said she was eager to return home to her two daughters and get a job. Though she is still in the hospital, she said she has had a chance to test her new features in public. People’s reaction has been positive: “They look at me normally.”
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