nation's first near-total face transplant
Cleveland Clinic Surgeons perform nation's first near-total face transplant
Surgery Largest, Most Complex of Its Kind; 80 Percent of Trauma Patient’s Face Transplanted.
Monday, Dec. 22, 2008: A multi-disciplinary team of doctors and surgeons at Cleveland Clinic recently performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States. In a 22-hour procedure performed within the past two weeks, surgeons transplanted 80 percent of a woman’s face who suffered severe facial trauma – essentially replacing her entire face, except for her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin. For the privacy and protection of those involved, no information will be released on the patient, the donor or their families.
As for the surgery, this is the largest and most complex face transplant in the world thus far (nearly 80% surface area), integrating different functional components such as nose and lower eyelids, as well as different tissue types including, skin, muscles, bony structures, arteries, veins and nerves.
The transplant team was led by Maria Siemionow, M.D., Ph.D., (Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgery Training at the Cleveland Clinic), who received worldwide attention in November 2004 when the Clinic’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) announced that face transplantation met requirements for both ethical and surgical parameters and approved the first protocol for the surgery
The Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Plastic Surgery led the face transplant surgery team. Team members included Frank A. Papay, M.D., (Chairman of the Dermatology and Plastic Surgery Institute), Daniel S. Alam, M.D., (Facial Plastic Surgeon), Risal Djohan, M.D., (Plastic Surgeon), Steven L. Bernard, M.D., (Plastic Surgeon), Mark Hendrickson, M.D., (Section Head, Hand Surgery), Robert F. Lohman, M.D., (Plastic Surgeon), John J. Fung, M.D., Ph.D., (Chairman of the Department of General Surgery; Director of the Transplant Center) Bijan Eghtesad, M.D., (Staff Surgeon in the Departments of General Surgery and Transplantation) and Chad Gordon, D.O., (Fellow in the Department of Plastic Surgery). Additional staff members were from psychology/psychiatry, bioethics, social work, anesthesia, transplant, nursing, infectious disease, dentistry, ophthalmology, pharmacy, were also significantly involved.
Further information on this transplant can be found at www.clevelandclinic.org/face
Maria Siemionow, M.D., Ph.D. will be giving a presentation on the first face transplantation in the US at the upcoming joint ASRT/ASRM symposium in Maui - Conference Details
