In the US, the most extensive face transplant surgery in history (video)
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Doctors in the United States conducted one of the largest surgery for a person in the history of modern medicine.
In an operation conducted last week at the Medical Center of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, more than 100 surgeons and nurses were involved. Their patient was the 37-year-old Richard Norris, whose face was disfigured as a result of the incident with the gun 15 years ago.
Norris received a new face from an anonymous donor, whose heart, lungs, liver and kidney were transplanted to five other patients. During the operation, which lasted 36 hours, Norris was also transplanted tongue, teeth, upper and lower jaw.
Chief surgeon Eduardo Rodriguez said that Norris is already moving his tongue, brushing his teeth and shaving. After the accident, he led a hermitic lifestyle, very rarely left his parents' house and always wore a surgical mask before going out.
"It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen," says Dr. Thomas Scalea of the Maryland Shock and Trauma Center. "I worked in the busiest traumatic center in New York, and now I work in an organization through which more people with injuries go than anywhere else in the country. But I've never seen anything so amazing. "
Full face transplantation radically changed the life of Richard Norris, who for the last 15 years led a hermitic lifestyle.
Norris (pictured on the left before the incident) will have to take medicines for the rest of his life, so that the rejection of transplanted tissues does not occur. According to Norris, he was already brushing his teeth and shaving, and his sense of smell returned to him.
"During the operation, doctors used innovative surgical techniques and computer technologies for high-precision transplantation. The patient was fully transplanted face, upper and lower jaws, teeth and - most importantly - the tongue and soft facial tissues from the crown to the neck. This is an unprecedented and historic operation that will change the course of the development of medicine. Many patients who did not have hope will now be able to change their lives for the better, "commented Albert Rhys, dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The operation was the result of ten-year research funded by the US Department of Defense. The Pentagon hopes that similar surgical techniques can help participants in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, who were injured as a result of explosions of artisanal bombs.
[1]