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Spanish doctors perform world's first face transplant on patient whose heart had stopped
The operation was undertaken by 60 professionals in Barcelona
The Bellvitge Hospital in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain) has performed the world’s first facial transplant from a donor whose heart had stopped. The team of around 60 professionals performed the operation on September 19. The operation took 12 hours to complete and was performed on a man with a benign tumour of nerve tissue on the right side of his face.
The tumour affected the man’s vision and made it extremely difficult for him to move his face. The 47-year-old patient suffered from neurofibromatosis type 1, characterised by the formation of benign tumours of nerve tissue on the face and other parts of the body.
The hospital has stressed that it is the first time in the world that a controlled extraction has been carried out when there is no heartbeat in the donor. The procedure allowed the heart, face and kidneys to be obtained.
The surgeons then removed the neurofibroma from the patient's face, which involved the complete removal of the upper lip, nose, eyelid of the right eye, the right half of the face and the right scalp.
The donor’s face was then implanted, connecting 1 artery, 4 veins and 4 nerves , so that the implanted face would take the shape of the recipient's face by adapting to their bone structure.
The team that carried out the procedure was led by the head of the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery service, Anna López, and the plastic surgeon Oriol Bermejo, with coordination led by the director of Transplants at the hospital, Gabriel Moreno.
López explained that the operation required mobilising “a very large and heterogeneous group of professionals , and their perfect coordination has been the great key to success.”
To date, face transplants have been performed in 18 centres around the world. In Spain there have been five such transplants.
Image: Bellvitge Hospital Universitari
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