Face Transplantation
Giving someone a face is not cosmetic surgery in extremis nor is it exploitative. For the right patient, and despite the risks, it is a necessity - Dr. Daniel Alam
image by: Dr. Jennifer Walden
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How to Adapt to Your Face Transplant
Just last month, Carmen Blandin had a remarkable dream. In it she saw, for the first time, not her old face in the mirror—the one she had for the first 38 years of her life—but the new face she received in a transplant three years ago. “I actually saw me with my new face,” she says. “Finally.” In the dream, she was smiling. Carmen became severely disfigured one evening in 2007, at her home in rural Vermont, when her estranged husband doused her with industrial strength lye while she lay in bed. She still identifies more with her original face, she says, but that doesn’t mean she wants it back.
That Carmen has, in some measure, moved on from her old identity by eschewing any desire…
Resources
For the Living, a Donated Face. For the Dead, a Lifelike Replacement.
NYU surgeons hope a 3-D printed reproduction will encourage people to donate the faces of dying family members for use as transplants.
How 3D technology is revolutionizing face transplants
From modeling to printing, it's all about seeing inside someone's head.
The First African American Face Transplant
In 2013, Robert Chelsea was hit by a drunk driver and sustained third-degree burns on more than half of his body. Nearly six years later, he became the first African American recipient of a full face transplant. We talk with Chelsea and Jamie Ducharme, a Time staff writer who followed his journey, about the procedure and how his story could help encourage organ donation by African Americans.
How 3D Printing Made Face Transplants Possible
Without 3D printing, the surgery would either be impossible or the recovery so dangerous and grueling that the risks would be far too high for most to consider.
What's it like living with a face transplant?
About 40 face transplants have been carried out since Ms Dinoire's pioneering procedure. Some, such as the world's most extensive face transplant carried out on a volunteer firefighter in the US, appear to have been a stunning success.
A ‘miracle’ face transplant gives young man a new life
He’d been waiting for this day, and when his doctor handed him the mirror, Andy Sandness stared at his image and absorbed the enormity of the moment: He had a new face, one that had belonged to another man.
Beyond recognition: the incredible story of a face transplant
The potential ramifications of face transplants have been apparent since before the very first procedure, and every new patient combats a unique array of physiological and psychological challenges.
Biography of a Face
For the moment, the face belongs to no one. It floats in a bowl of icy, hemodynamic preserving solution, paused midway on its journey from one operating room to another...
Changing Faces
Changing Faces began its work in 1992 to help people who have a disfigurement find a way to live the life they want. We are caring campaigners – caring and empowering in supportive, friendly, positive and inspiring ways, and campaigning in our education and advocacy work by being forthright, informed, counter-cultural and determined.
Connie Culp, First Face Transplant Recipient in U.S., Dies at 57
Her near-total transplant in 2008 was at the time the most complex one ever performed. She was the fourth patient in the world to undergo such a procedure.
Could You Love Someone Without a Face? Making Facial Transplants Common Practice
When you meet a face transplant recipient, you become immediately aware that you're talking to someone extraordinary.
Face and Hand Transplants Raise Ethical Questions for Living Donors
The health care system needs to be prepared to protect potential VCA donors by optimizing the informed consent process.
Faceless
In Alyssa Sheinmel’s Faceless, a freak accident robs Maise of her face and her life as she knew it. A facial transplant is supposed to be the start of getting it all back, but doesn’t come close to restoring normalcy to her life. Instead, struggling with rage, grief, and loss of identity, Maise pushes away her friends and boyfriend and struggles to relocate the core of herself.
First U.S. Face Transplant Described
The highly experimental procedure, performed within the last two weeks, was the world’s fourth partial face transplant, the country’s first, and the most extensive and complicated such operation to date. Dr. Maria Siemionow led the surgical team, which took turns at the operating table so the doctors could rest, sleep and share expertise.
How long until we can print human faces in the lab?
If that all sounds like a long road ahead, the good news is that the journey will bring more immediate benefits in the fields of disease modelling and drug development.
One Year Later, Face Transplant Recipient Just A Normal Guy
If you saw Patrick Hardison walking down the street, you probably wouldn’t give him a second glance. That’s a big change from his life just over a year ago.
The Ethics of Face Transplantation
Major ethical and psychological dilemmas surround the idea of "wearing someone else's face," ie, a face removed from a cadaver. It is very likely that the patients who will undergo the face transplants will experience a good deal of intense psychological distress and anxiety while making the adjustment to wearing a new face.
The Technology and Ethics of Face Transplants
The procedure has raised ethical and technical questions about how and when such a transplant should be done.
What living with a face transplant has taught me about myself
There's part of you that has nothing to do with what you see in the mirror, discovered Carmen Blandin Tarleton after an attack that left her with 80 per cent burns.
What’s The Future Of Face Transplants?
But although face transplants are still relatively new, this exhausting procedure has come a long way since the first partial face transplant in France in 2005.
Widow Meets the Man Who Received Face Transplant From Her Husband
After her husband died by suicide, a man disfigured by his own attempt received his face.
How to Adapt to Your Face Transplant
What’s more, it turns out that getting a new face may be less difficult psychologically than adapting to new hands, say surgeons and psychologists who have worked with both kinds of patients. One critical difference is that your hands are within sight throughout the day, while your face is only visible with a mirror.
8 things to know about face transplants
Face transplant recipients could be imbued with many post-operative challenges including both physical and psychological complications. Controversy surrounding the surgery stems from donors being taken off life support and the risks involved with the complicated procedure as the lives of recipients' are not technically at-risk at the time of surgery.
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