Graft face

The partial graft of face

In France

First partial graft of face in 2005

In 2005, the professors Bernard Devauchelle, Sylvie Testelin of CHU of Amiens and the professor Benoit Lengelé of the Catholic University of Leuwen, carried out in collaboration with the team of the professor Jean-Michel Dubernard of the CHU of Lyon the first Clerc's Office partial of the face in the world (clerk's office of the triangle formed by the nose and the mouth) on a 38 year old woman, Isabelle Dinoire. This operation took place between the Sunday 27 and the Monday November 28th with CHU of Amiens.

This patient had lost part of her face, devoured by the Labrador retriever of her daughter, during a Coma caused by the catch of sleeping pills. This operation received an favorable opinion of the commission of ethics. The polemic related on its psychological brittleness (a rumor making of this catch of sleeping pills an suicide attempt), on the identity to be preserved with the face of another, and to the role of the British press which covered the event.

One year after the operation, an assessment gives a report on the return of the mobility and sensitivity of the grafted zone; the patient can again eat, speak and smile, and leave in public without drawing the attention. However, in spite of the success of the Clerc's Office, the risks of rejection are great. It is necessary to take a life treatment and to make exercises to recover the mobility of its face.

The Clerc's Office and its continuations are told in a book of Noëlle Châtelet, the Baiser of Isabelle published in October 2007.

Second partial graft of face in 2007

On January 21st and 22nd 2007, the team of professor Laurent Lantiéri, CHU Henri-Mondor of Creteil (the Valley-of-Marne) carried out the second transplantation of the face, during an operation which will have lasted 15 hours. The patient, 27 years old, suffered from a very serious form of the disease of Von Recklinghausen, an incurable pathology which can, in his most serious forms, to deform the face, at the point for the patient to more be able to face the glance of the others. He underwent a Clerc's Office nose-stop-chin-cheeks. As opposed to what one could read or to listen in the media, here or there, the disease of Recklinghausen from which this patient suffers is not the disease from which Joseph Merrick suffered whose film of David Lynch, The Elephant man tells the histoire.
The main issue in this operation was that the plexiform neurofibromes which deformed its face are hemorrhagic.

In China

In April 2006, a hunter bitten with the face by a bear received a partial graft of face including/understanding a cheek, the upper lip, the nose and an eyebrow. The patient Li Guoxing, 30 years a Chinese peasant, disfigured by a bear, had in his turn partially grafted at the hospital Xijing de Xian.

The total Clerc's Office of face

Two teams, one British and other American, respectively obtained in October 2006 and in 2004 the agreement of their medical authorities to carry out the first complete Clerc's Office of face in the world. The patients who could profit from such an intervention are in the course of selection.

Notes and reference

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