The world's first partial face transplant has been performed on a 38-year-old French woman, whose lips and nose were ripped off in a dog attack, the surgeon who carried out the operation told AFP on Wednesday.
Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who performed the world's first hand transplant in 1998, confirmed news reports that the transplant had taken place, without giving further details.
According to Thursday's issue of the French news magazine Le Point, a team of surgeons led by Dubernard and Professor Bernard Devauchelle carried out the operation on Sunday and Monday in the northern French town of Amiens.
In the high-risk operation, a triangle formed by the nose and mouth was grafted on to the patient, from the northern French town of Valenciennes, who was admitted to hospital in May, the weekly said.
The facial tissues, muscles, arteries and veins needed for the transplant were taken on Sunday from a donor in the northern city of Lille, who was in a brain-dead condition, according to Le Point.
Dubernard, a surgeon at the Edouard Herriot hospital in Lyon and a French deputy, performed the world's first hand transplant in September 1998, followed by the first double hand and forearm transplant in January 2000.
Devauchelle is a facial surgery specialist from the CHU university hospital in Amiens.