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TechnoratiTwo others have received partial face transplants since then — a Chinese farmer attacked by a bear and a European man disfigured by a genetic condition. Both are believed to be doing well, though details, especially of the Chinese case, have been scant.
In the Cleveland case, "it is very important what kind of recipient they selected," and how great the need was, Pomahac (POE-ma-hawk) said. "Hopefully it will open the door both to the public and to other centers" wanting to do these operations.
Details of the Cleveland surgery are not known, but surgeons generally transplant skin, facial nerves and muscle, and often other deep tissue. That is done so the new face will actually function and not just be a mask.
In an interview at the Cleveland Clinic in 2005, Siemionow spoke of the terrible need she saw in people horribly disfigured, and how badly it scarred their social and emotional lives, not just their bodies.
"There are no really good alternative therapies for the severely burned or patients with a facial injury or damage," she said.
Her task now is to prevent organ rejection while managing the risk of infection from taking strong immune-suppressing drugs.
Rejection is a possibility whenever someone receives an organ or cells from someone else because the body regards this as foreign tissue. Two types of problems can result.
The first is graft-versus-host disease, which could happen if the new facial tissue were to attack the recipient's body. The second is if the patient's body were to attack the transplanted face, causing inflammation and other problems at the site of the new tissue.
Either of these can be life-threatening. They can come on suddenly, within days or weeks of the operation, or set in slowly.
