Face transplant
Face Transplant Surgeons Make History And Change A Man’s Life
Volunteer firefighter Patrick Hardison, a 41-year-old resident of Senatobia, Mississippi, suffered extensive facial burns after responding to a residential fire in 2001 — and his life has never been the same.
He lost his eyelids, ears, lips, most of his nose and all facial hair in the accident. Ever since, Hardison would wear a basketball cap, sunglasses, and prosthetic ears to cover his wounds while in public. But now, he has a new face.
Watch a video about Hardison’s emotional journey above.
Hardison underwent a face transplant surgery at New York University’s Langone Medical Center in August, receiving a new face, scalp, ears, chin, cheeks, nose, eyelids, and the eye muscles that control blinking. Now that he is successfully recovering, the procedure is being called the most extensive face transplant to date, and the first in New York.
The hospital announced the surgery in a press conference on Monday.
Enabling Hardison to open and close his eyelids was the surgery’s primary purpose, said Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, a plastic surgeon at the center who led the 26-hour procedure. It’s the first time that doctors have transplanted a patient’s eyelids.
“We often think how one could live with this type of injury, but Patrick did. He persisted,” Rodriguez said.
Hardison’s face before and after the face transplant surgery.Surgeons completed the procedure using the face of 26-year-old David Rodebaugh, a Brooklyn bike mechanic who was pronounced brain dead after a bicycle accident and who donated his organs through Live On NY donor network. The doctors attached Rodebaugh’s facial tissue to Hardison’s face, connecting some nerves and major veins while allowing other nerves to regenerate.
“I am deeply grateful to my donor and his family,” Hardison said in a statement. “Even though I did not know who they would be, I prayed for them every day, knowing the difficult decision they would have to make in order to help me. I hope they see in me the goodness of their decision. I also want to thank Dr. Rodriguez and his amazing team. They have given me more than a new face. They have given me a new life.”
More than 100 physicians, nurses, technical staff, and support staff collaborated on the operation, which has given Hardison improved facial function. They also helped him through his recovery and rehabilitation after the procedure.
Hardison is continuing to receive extensive rehabilitation therapy to help with his facial strength and speech.
“The fact that we were able to perform this and the patient was able to come out of the operating room safely is a very important, historic event,” Rodriguez said. “Now we have proven that the technology, the ability to transplant faces, has advanced.”
Watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/1rFk8sSJhXk
Mississippi firefighter Patrick Hardison has most extensive face transplant ever.
‘Kids ran screaming when the saw me… now I’m just an average guy’: Firefighter whose features ‘melted’ while tackling a blaze is given a brand new face in the most extensive transplant ever performed
- Former firefighter Pat Hardison, 41, was given face of David Rodebaugh, 26
- Hardison’s face was badly burned while he tackled a house fire in 2001
- His children were terrified of his disfigured face afterwards
- In August this year Rodebaugh died following a cycling accident
- His mom agreed to the transplant, saying he had wanted to be a firefighter
- The 26-hour face transplant was led by Dr Eduardo Rodriguez at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York
- Hardison is now expected to regain normal eyesight thanks to the surgery
A former firefighter whose face was so horrifically burnt while tackling a blaze that he ‘scared his own children’ has been given a brand new one in the most extensive transplant ever performed.
Pat Hardison now wears the face of David Rodebaugh – a 26-year-old who died in August following a cycling accident.
The procedure – which was the riskiest face transplant carried out to date – has left Hardison feeling normal again and it should restore his impaired sight, too.
The Tennessee man was told he had only a 50 per cent chance of surviving the surgery but it was a risk he was willing to take.
He said he had been left so horrifically disfigured that young children – including his own – ran away screaming at the sight of him.
Hardison’s face had ‘melted’ off during a fire at a mobile home in Senatobia, Mississippi, on September 5, 2001.
- Recalling the incident, he told ABC: ‘It was just a normal day. Just like every other fire…we went in looking for a lady.’
He entered the house with three other firefighters but the ceiling collapsed 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 sight and prevented smoke from damaging his throat and lungs.
Volunteer firefighter Bricky Cole later described the horrible moment Hardison came out of the house.
‘His face was smoking and flesh was melting off,’ Cole recalled. ‘It was all char.’
The former firefighter spent 63 days in hospital and was given the semblance of a face with flesh taken from his thighs. He had lost his ears, lips, most of his nose and virtually all of his eyelid tissue.
Because of this, he was unable to see properly.
When he returned home, he recalled how his three young children, Alison, six, Dalton, three and Averi, two, were terrified of him.
He told ABC: ‘My kids were scared of me. You can’t blame them. They’re young kids.’
He playfully told them and other curious children that he had fought a bear but they ‘ran screaming and crying when they saw me. There are things worse than dying.’
In the painful years that followed, Hardison underwent 71 operations (at a rate of around seven a year) to try to rebuild his mouth, nose and eyelids using skin grafts. His continuing ordeal meant he soon spiralled into depression.
10 YEARS OF FACIAL TRANSPLANTS
The first partial facial transplant was done in 2005 on Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old French woman who had been bitten by a dog.
The first operation in the US was performed in December 2008 on Connie Culp, 46, from Cleveland who was shot by her husband four years earlier.
In Spain in 2010, a 31-year-old man named only as Oscar, a farmer who accidentally shot himself in the face, was given what was then described as the world’s first full facial transplant.
Even though he had two more children, Braden and Cullen after the accident, the impact of his accident put a huge strain on his family life and after ten years of marriage, he and his wife Chrissi divorced.
Further tragedy followed when he was declared bankrupt and lost his home. He later explained that during the years of agonizing operations and recoveries, he had become addicted to pain-killers, which impacted on his new tire shop business.
His story was first revealed in an interview with the New York magazine yesterday.
Eventually a church friend of Hardison’s wrote to Dr Rodriguez, who had performed a 2012 face transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
The doctor said he would try to help, and in August 2014 Hardison was placed on a waiting list.
He needed a donor who matched his skin color, hair color and blood type, as well as skeletal structure.
A year later, Rodebaugh was identified as a potential donor by LiveOnNY, the nonprofit organization that seeks transplant organs and tissue in the New York City area.
Rodeburgh had crashed and hit his head while riding his bike in July this year. A few weeks later, he was declared brain-dead at the hospital.
When a representative with LiveOnNY approached his mother about donating his face, she accepted, noting how he had always wanted to be a firefighter.
Rodebaugh’s heart, liver and kidneys were also donated to other patients, along with his corneas, bone and skin tissue.
During the face transplant, Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez removed the donor’s face and scalp, including the outer skin, tissue, nerves and muscle, as the surgical team removed the skin on Hardison’s face.
Rodriguez then placed the donor face on Hardison and connected the blood vessels.
More than 100 doctors, nurses, technical and support staff took part in the 26-hour operation, conducted in mid-August at the NYU Langone Medical Center.
Now three months later, Hardison is still recovering but with his new eyelids and more surgery, is expected to regain a normal field of vision for the first time in more than a decade.
He will have to continue taking medications to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant.
Eventually, ‘a casual observer will not notice anything that is odd’ in Hardison’s new face, which will be a blend of features of his original face and the donor’s, Dr Rodriguez said.
Hardison said his new face has already made a difference when he goes outside.
He said: ‘I used to get stared at all the time, but now I’m just an average guy.’
He now hopes to do motivational speaking and helping wounded veterans. He has also set the ambitious target of learning to drive again.
His message? ‘Just how there is hope.’
Double hand transplant ‘success’.
A woman who became the first in the world to receive a double hand transplant has left hospital.
A team of surgeons at Hospital La Fe in Valencia carried out the pioneering operation.
Alba Lucia, 47, originally from Colombia, who had the 10-hour operation on November 30, said she was “very happy and enormously satisfied”.
Both her original hands were amputated after an explosion in her student chemistry lab nearly 30 years ago.
| They look beautiful
Alba Lucia |
Her new limbs came from a woman who was declared brain dead following an accident.
The donor’s arms were removed from above the elbow, and the severed limbs were cooled and transported to Hospital La Fe in less than five hours.
A team of more than 10 medical professionals, including surgeons and anaesthetists, then worked to attach them to Alba’s arms.
Both transplants were carried out simultaneously.
First, Alba’s forearms had to be adjusted to match the size of the donor limbs.
Bones were fixed with metal plates and screws, and microscopic surgery was used to attached the arteries, veins and nerves.
After the operation, when she saw her new hands for the first time, Ms Lucia said: “They look beautiful.”
Arms matched
Pedro Cavadas, the lead surgeon, said he was pleased with the outcome of the operation.
“She has two new hands and forearms two inches above the wrist bone.
“It will be five to six months before she has any feeling.”
He added: “She’s delighted, because after 28 years without hands. she sees herself with some perfectly beautiful ones.
“She will have two useful hands that will allow her an independent life.”
But he added: “In any case this is much better than any prosthesis.”
Six double-handed transplants have been carried out on men. The first was carried out on a 33-year-old man in France in 2000.
Source: BBC
ing:��>s � ��� e=’font-size:13.0pt;font-family:”Arial“,”sans-serif”;color:#333333′>The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said there was a need for urgent action, but there was no “silver bullet” solution.
Officer for health promotion, Prof Mitch Blair, said: “We need to look seriously at how fast food is marketed at children and consider banning junk food prior to the 21:00 watershed, limiting the number of fast food outlets near schools, and making sure children are taught the importance of a healthy, balanced diet and how to cook nutritious meals from an early age at school.”
Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “These are very worrying findings that shed more light on a growing threat to the heart health of this nation.
“We know obese children are more likely to become obese adults who are then at greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke. We must encourage the next generation to make healthier lifestyle choices and help them eat a balanced diet and stay active.
“Ensuring children and teenagers are a healthy weight today means healthier hearts tomorrow.”
Source: BBC
Spanish doctors prepare for first double leg transplant.
The world’s first double leg transplant will happen once a donor is found, Spain’s health ministry has announced.
A man who lost his legs in an accident, and who cannot use prosthetic limbs, will be the recipient.
A double-arm transplant was carried out in Munich in 2008, but no-one has yet received a leg transplant.
The doctor leading the leg transplant team, Pedro Cavadas, performed Spain’s first double-hand transplant in 2006.
That operation took place at the Hospital de la Fe in Valencia, where the leg transplant will also be carried out.
The announcement was made at an international conference in Madrid, called the “Last frontiers of transplant operations”.
The leg operation was approved in May by the ministry’s transplant commission.
Spain’s health minister, Leire Pajin, also announced the approval of Spain’s fourth face transplant at the conference.
This operation will also be carried out by Dr Cavadas, who is hailed in the Spanish media as a “miracle doctor”.
The world’s first full facial transplant was carried out in Spain earlier this year by a different surgeon, Joan Pere Barret.
“Transplants of hands, arms or faces from dead people were science fiction just a decade ago and today they are a splendid reality at our hospitals,” said the director of Spain’s National Organisation of Transplants, Rafael Matesanz, at the opening of the conference.
A spokeswoman quoted by the Agence France Press news agency said the leg transplant operation could take place in two or six months, depending on when a suitable donor was found.
First transplants
- 1998 – the world’s first forearm transplant
- 2000 – first double-hand transplant
- 2002 – first womb transplant
- 2005 – first partial face transplant
- 2008 – first double-arm transplant
- 2010 – first full facial transplant
Source: BBC
cs an{�id � �� aid there was a need for urgent action, but there was no “silver bullet” solution.
Officer for health promotion, Prof Mitch Blair, said: “We need to look seriously at how fast food is marketed at children and consider banning junk food prior to the 21:00 watershed, limiting the number of fast food outlets near schools, and making sure children are taught the importance of a healthy, balanced diet and how to cook nutritious meals from an early age at school.”
Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “These are very worrying findings that shed more light on a growing threat to the heart health of this nation.
“We know obese children are more likely to become obese adults who are then at greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke. We must encourage the next generation to make healthier lifestyle choices and help them eat a balanced diet and stay active.
“Ensuring children and teenagers are a healthy weight today means healthier hearts tomorrow.”
Source: BBC
Source: BBC
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