Doctor says he's not racing to advance face-transplants

Nearly two years after a Frenchwoman received the world's first partial face transplant after being mauled by a dog, one of her surgeons says he's not in a race to perform even more radical procedures.

Dr. Benoit G. Lengelé of Belgium knows of plans for full-face transplants in Cleveland, but he said he believes these surgeries will give the patients a mask-like appearance, adding doctors are still keeping a watchful eye on the first transplant patient.

"You need to understand that it's not a race," Lengelé said Friday at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. "Technically, (a full-face transplant's) possible. But we are not planning to do such operations. We are not waiting for patients. We are not searching for patients. When we have candidates, we will perform other face transplants, but it depends on what our patients will need."

The doctor, who was part of the team behind the groundbreaking and controversial surgery in November 2005, said other doctors' plans in Cleveland and London are technically not the full-face transplants they are touted as.

"It's not a full-face transplant because it doesn't include nerves, muscles and underlying tissues that are responsible for the expressivity and function of the face," Lengelé said.

There have been two partial transplant attempts, one in China and another in Paris, since doctors sewed the chin, lips and nose of a dead woman onto 38-year-old Isabelle Dinoire.

Showing April 16, 2007, footage of Dinoire talking and smiling, Lengelé said she has a new lease on life. She's working again, holding a part-time job in the textile industry.

Still, she faces a life of potential complications. Her body has twice tried to reject the transplant since the 2005 operation, being treated with more medication to prevent that. The last time was more than a year ago, however.

Lengelé, who is in Chicago for a conference, showed the room full of Lutheran General doctors a photo of the woman before surgery that was dramatically different from her appearance after the transplant.

"She says, 'It's my face but it's not completely my face like before.' She says, 'I'm different,'" Lengelé said. "But obviously she's different. She's now the first woman in the world with a face transplant."

Lengelé also addressed ethical questions raised by other doctors and the public, arguing against those who say disfigurement is not a problem worth risking a patient's life to correct.

Dramatic footage showed Dinoire lighting up a cigarette and shielding her almost skeletal face as people walked by before her surgery. "Each disfigured patient would answer you that to live without a face is not a life," he said.