Face transplants

[waltky]

Tune in to "Nightline" at 12:35 a.m. ET this week to watch the full story...

Unprecedented Face Transplant Surgery Gives Former Firefighter Hope for a Better Life
Nov 15, 2015 - Being a volunteer firefighter meant everything to Pat Hardison, but when an accident during a rescue mission left his face severely burned, he thought he would never be the same again. “It was terrible,” Hardison, 41, told “Nightline." “I mean, I left home one day a normal dad, leaving to go to work, just a blonde-haired, blue-eyed-- that had everything going, I thought, and just like that everything changed drastically.”

But 14 years later, Hardison got the call to come to NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, where a surgical team, led by renown reconstructive surgeon Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, who is the chair of the hospital’s Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery, would prepare him for the most extensive face transplant ever performed. It was a procedure so extreme and so risky that his doctors warned him he only had a 50-50 chance of surviving it. But it was a risk he was willing to take for the chance to get his life back and feel normal again. “I prayed daily that there would be a miracle to help me get through this, and you know, it’s all in God’s timing,” Hardison said.

Pat Hardison is shown here before the 2001 fire (left), then before his face transplant(center), then after transplant (right)​

In 2001, Hardison and his second wife Chrissi were raising their three children in his hometown of Senatobia, Mississippi. At 27, he was a charming, successful salesman who ran the family tire business, but his real passion was working with the local volunteer fire department where he was a captain. “It was my way of life, that was what I did,” he said. “I didn’t do it to make a living, I did it because I loved it... at this department it’s different. It’s not like a fire department that volunteers, we’re a brotherhood.” It was a brotherhood made up of the kind of men willing to rush headlong into a burning home, which is exactly what Hardison did on Sept. 5, 2001. “It was just a normal day,” he said. “Just like every other fire... we went in looking for a lady.”

Pat Hardison sees himself for the first time on Aug. 24, 2015, after his face transplant surgery​

Hardison and his fellow firefighters got the call to respond to a house fire, and when they arrived, he entered the building with three other firefighters. He doesn’t remember much of what happened next, except the ceiling collapsing around him. “[My mask] was melting to my face,” Hardison said. “My hose [was] already melted.” He pulled the mask off, held his breath and closed his eyes, which doctors say saved his throat and lungs from smoke inhalation damage and from losing his vision. He doesn’t remember exactly how he managed to escape the inferno but by the time he got out, he was unrecognizable. “There was nothing left of his face to tell you who he was,” said Bricky Cole, one of Hardison’s friends and another volunteer firefighter on-scene that day.

Pat Hardison is shown here wearing a baseball hat in this family photo before his face transplant surgery​

His friends rushed to save Hardison’s life, but they didn’t realize who they were working on until he was being loaded into an ambulance. “He pulled me down over his face… and said, ‘you got to take care of Chrissi and the kids,’ and my world shut down,” said Cole. “You never think it’s going to happen to you or yours. We closed the door on that ambulance and I figured it was the last time I would ever see him alive.” Hardison spent the next 63 days at the hospital recovering from the burns that took his scalp, ears, eyelids, nose and lips. His entire face was gone. When he got home, Hardison said his three children, Alison who was 6, Dalton who was 3 and Averi who was 2 years old at the time, were terrified of him. “My kids were scared to death of me. You can't blame them. They’re young kids,” he said. “And you got to realize … we always did stuff every day, and all of the sudden that changed just overnight.” His oldest child Alison said she didn’t realize what her dad had gone through until the first time she saw him, “and I remember going up the house and my mom and step-dad literally had to drag me into the house because I was scared,” she said, fighting back tears.

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[Iron Head]

Maybe Chris can look into this as an option.

 

[shadow355]

And for the past three years or so ...... My armpits get swollen and painful infrequently.

At times my armpits get inflamed, red and blustery.

And people are having facial surgery.

Shadow 355

 

[Muhammed]

After that video there was a video about anxiety disorder.

After I watched that I wondered if that's what my niece is dealing with. I think my niece has that. She is extremely shy around everyone except my brother, my daughter and myself.

She's 14 years old, 6' 3" and a multi-instrumentalist. Classical guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, electric bass guitar, drums, keys, trumpet, harmonica and saxophone.

But she is very self-conscious and shy, perhaps because she grew up so fast, much faster than her peers at school, and she is also an albino so she's much different than everyone at school. Her skin is very pale and her bright turquoise colored irises and snow white hair freak some people out. She's very striking in appearance. Especially for her age. She's only a 14 year old girl and towers over most adult men.

 

[waltky]

A type of progeria for face transplant patients...

Transplanted faces may age prematurely
Dec. 4, 2015 - Doctors are unsure why bone and muscle atrophy in recipients over time.

There have been more than 30 face transplants performed around the world, however researchers have been unsure how recipients would fare long-term because the field is so new.

Above, two of three face transplant patients followed by researchers for three years can be seen six, 18, and 36 months after their surgeries, and all of whom show evidence of bone and muscle atrophy causing the appearance of premature aging. Researchers followed the three patients to observe the long-term effects of the transplants.​

In a new study, researchers found transplanted faces change their appearance based on the recipient's bone structure and appear to age at an accelerated rate. And while doctors have confirmed something is going on to appear like faster aging, they note they're unsure exactly what is happening. "The field of face transplantation is young, and we are all learning about our interventions and their outcomes," said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School who performed the first facial transplant in the United States, in a press release. "We studied why transplanted faces seem to age fast as well as we could, but we don't really know many other things: When does this process end? Is it possibly a sign of inadequate blood supply or ongoing rejection? As often occurs in science, our study raises more questions than it answered."

Researchers followed three face transplant recipients for 36 months to see how their faces held up over time. The researchers reported a significant decrease in facial volume that resembled aging, however it was a reduction in volume of bone and muscle, rather than facial fat or skin thickness seen in normal aging. Researchers note in the study countermeasures are needed to reverse, delay or prevent atrophy causing the appearance of aging in transplanted faces. "But first we have to understand what's exactly going on, and we are not there yet."

Transplanted faces may age prematurely

 

[waltky]

1st face transplant patient dies at 49...

Frenchwoman who got world's 1st face transplant dies at 49
Sep 6,`16 -- Isabelle Dinoire, a Frenchwoman who received the world's first partial face transplant, has died more than a decade after a complex and daring operation that set the stage for dozens of similar transplants worldwide. She was 49.

Her life with a new face was a miracle to many, but was also marred by infections, kidney trouble and hypertension linked to her treatment. In announcing her death Tuesday, the Amiens University Hospital in northern France said Dinoire's experience "illustrates perfectly the high stakes of face transplants." The hospital said Dinoire died in April, but didn't announce it until Tuesday because the family wanted to mourn privately. After being severely disfigured by her pet Labrador, Dinoire was given a new nose, chin and lips in a ground-breaking, 15-hour operation in 2005 led by doctors Bernard Devauchelle and Jean-Michel Dubernard in the Amiens hospital. When she first appeared in public with her new face four months later, her speech was slurred and a scar clearly visible - but the fact that she could speak to reporters of having a "face like everyone else" and almost smile was seen as a medical breakthrough.

However, despite what the hospital described as a "remarkable" transplant, she had health issues for years linked to the medication she took to keep her body from rejecting the new face, and underwent new surgery in January. Soon afterward, doctors discovered a malign tumor, according to Tuesday's statement. Independent doctors who followed her case said she had lung cancer that might have been linked to her treatment, or to her lifetime of smoking. The operation changed Dinoire's life and drew international attention. There have been 36 face transplant surgeries around the world since 2005, including one last year in New York that was the first to include a scalp and functioning eyelids. Of the 36, six have died, the Amiens hospital noted. "Facial transplants remain extremely complex surgery with high risk," it said. "It's important to remember that face transplants are still in the evaluation stage. They ... cannot be considered a routine activity."

Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses reporters during her first press conference since the transplant at the Amiens hospital, northern France. The 38-year-old woman was mauled by a dog, leaving her with severe facial injuries that her doctors said made it difficult for her to speak and eat. Dinoire who received the world’s first partial face transplant has died, 11 years after surgery that set the stage for dozens of other transplants around the world.​

Dinoire, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, said she was wrestling with personal problems at the time of the 2005 dog attack and "took some drugs to forget." She said she was passed out when the dog bit her. Disabled by her disfigurement, she welcomed the opportunity for a transplant from a brain-dead woman. Her doctors said they repeatedly warned her of the risks involved. Her operation was "an unquestionable surgical success" and the medical community learned from her experience, said Dr. Jean-Paul Meningaud, who heads the reconstructive surgery department at the Henri Mondor Hospital south of Paris and wasn't involved in treating Dinoire. Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, met with Dinoire in 2008 as his team was preparing its first face transplant, and called it a "really profound experience." "She seemed to be speaking perfectly fine, she ate with us. Like a normal person," he said. Pomahac noted that face transplant recipients are about twice as likely to reject the new tissue as hand transplant patients. But he remains convinced that transplants are right for some patients who "have no other options."

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